TY - JOUR TI - Distinct roles of visual, parietal, and frontal motor cortices in memory-guided sensorimotor decisions AU - Goard, Michael J AU - Pho, Gerald N AU - Woodson, Jonathan AU - Sur, Mriganka A2 - Mrsic-Flogel, Thomas D VL - 5 PY - 2016 DA - 2016/08/04 SP - e13764 C1 - eLife 2016;5:e13764 DO - 10.7554/eLife.13764 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.13764 AB - 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. KW - multiphoton microscopy KW - optogenetics KW - decision making KW - short-term memory JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -