title: In vivo two-photon Ca2+ imaging reveals selective reward effects on stimulus-specific assemblies in mouse visual cortex.
abstract: Experiences can alter functional properties of neurons in primary sensory neocortex but it is poorly understood how stimulus-reward associations contribute to these changes. Using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging in mouse primary visual cortex (V1), we show that association of a directional visual stimulus with reward results in broadened orientation tuning and sharpened direction tuning in a stimulus-selective subpopulation of V1 neurons. Neurons with preferred orientations similar, but not identical to, the CS+ selectively increased their tuning curve bandwidth and thereby exhibited an increased response amplitude at the CS+ orientation. The increase in response amplitude was observed for a small range of orientations around the CS+ orientation. A nonuniform spatial distribution of reward effects across the cortical surface was observed, as the spatial distance between pairs of CS+ tuned neurons was reduced compared with pairs of CS- tuned neurons and pairs of control directions or orientations. These data show that, in primary visual cortex, formation of a stimulus-reward association results in selective alterations in stimulus-specific assemblies rather than population-wide effects.
authors.affiliation: Center for Neuroscience, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Pieter M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Goltstein
authors.forename: Emily B J
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Coffey
authors.forename: Pieter R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Roelfsema
authors.forename: Cyriel M A
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Pennartz
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002118:Calcium / Q000378:metabolism*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal / Q000379:methods; D036641:Microscopy, Fluorescence, Multiphoton / Q000379:methods; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011897:Random Allocation; D012201:Reward; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D002118:Calcium