Adaptive action selection during stimulus categorization is an important feature of flexible behavior. To examine neural mechanism underlying this process, we trained mice to categorize the spatial frequencies of visual stimuli according to a boundary that changed between blocks of trials in a session. Using a model with a dynamic decision criterion, we found that sensory history was important for adaptive action selection after the switch of boundary. Bilateral inactivation of the secondary motor cortex (M2) impaired adaptive action selection by reducing the behavioral influence of sensory history. Electrophysiological recordings showed that M2 neurons carried more information about upcoming choice and previous sensory stimuli when sensorimotor association was being remapped than when it was stable. Thus, M2 causally contributes to flexible action selection during stimulus categorization, with the representations of upcoming choice and sensory history regulated by the demand to remap stimulus-action association.
All data generated or analyzed during this study are available on Dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1c59zw3rs. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1-6.
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Animal experimentation: Animal use procedures were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences (approval number NA-013-2019), and were in accordance with the guidelines of the Animal Advisory Committee at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences.
© 2020, Wang et al.
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