title: Distinct roles of visual, parietal, and frontal motor cortices in memory-guided sensorimotor decisions.
abstract: Mapping specific sensory features to future motor actions is a crucial capability of mammalian nervous systems. We investigated the role of visual (V1), posterior parietal (PPC), and frontal motor (fMC) cortices for sensorimotor mapping in mice during performance of a memory-guided visual discrimination task. Large-scale calcium imaging revealed that V1, PPC, and fMC neurons exhibited heterogeneous responses spanning all task epochs (stimulus, delay, response). Population analyses demonstrated unique encoding of stimulus identity and behavioral choice information across regions, with V1 encoding stimulus, fMC encoding choice even early in the trial, and PPC multiplexing the two variables. Optogenetic inhibition during behavior revealed that all regions were necessary during the stimulus epoch, but only fMC was required during the delay and response epochs. Stimulus identity can thus be rapidly transformed into behavioral choice, requiring V1, PPC, and fMC during the transformation period, but only fMC for maintaining the choice in memory prior to execution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.|Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.|Department of Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, United States.|Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, United States.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5366-8501
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Goard
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.|Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.
authors.forename: Gerald N
authors.initials: GN
authors.lastname: Pho
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.|Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Woodson
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.|Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States.
authors.forename: Mriganka
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sur
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002755:Choice Behavior; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D008568:Memory; D051379:Mice; D062308:Optogenetics; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D066191:Sensorimotor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: decision making; mouse; multiphoton microscopy; neuroscience; optogenetics; short-term memory