Multimodal mismatch responses in mouse auditory cortex

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

Summary:

The manuscript presents a short report investigating mismatch responses in the auditory cortex, following previous studies focused on the visual cortex. By correlating the mouse locomotion speed with acoustic feedback levels, the authors demonstrate excitatory responses in a subset of neurons to halts in expected acoustic feedback. They show a lack of responses to mismatch in the visual modality. A subset of neurons show enhanced mismatch responses when both auditory and visual modalities are coupled to the animal's locomotion.

While the study is well-designed and addresses a timely question, several concerns exist regarding the quantification of animal behavior, potential alternative explanations for recorded signals, correlation between excitatory responses and animal velocity, discrepancies in reported values, and clarity regarding the identity of certain neurons.

Strengths:

(1) Well-designed study addressing a timely question in the field.

(2) Successful transition from previous work focused on the visual cortex to the auditory cortex, demonstrating generic principles in mismatch responses.

(3) The correlation between mouse locomotion speed and acoustic feedback levels provides evidence for a prediction signal in the auditory cortex.

(4) Coupling of visual and auditory feedback shows putative multimodal integration in the auditory cortex.

Weaknesses:

(1) Lack of quantification of animal behavior upon mismatches, potentially leading to alternative interpretations of recorded signals.

(2) Unclear correlation between excitatory responses and animal velocity during halts, particularly in closed-loop versus playback conditions.

(3) Discrepancies in reported values in a few figure panels raise questions about data consistency and interpretation.

(4) Ambiguity regarding the identity of the [AM+VM] MM neurons.

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

In this study, Solyga and Keller use multimodal closed-loop paradigms in conjunction with multiphoton imaging of cortical responses to assess whether and how sensorimotor prediction errors in one modality influence the computation of prediction errors in another modality. Their work addresses an important open question pertaining to the relevance of non-hierarchical (lateral cortico-cortical) interactions in predictive processing within the neocortex.

Specifically, they monitor GCaMP6f responses of layer 2/3 neurons in the auditory cortex of head-fixed mice engaged in VR paradigms where running is coupled to auditory, visual, or audio-visual sensory feedback. The authors find strong auditory and motor responses in the auditory cortex, as well as weak responses to visual stimuli. Further, in agreement with previous work, they find that the auditory cortex responds to audiomotor mismatches in a manner similar to that observed in visual cortex for visuomotor mismatches. Most importantly, while visuomotor mismatches by themselves do not trigger significant responses in the auditory cortex, simultaneous coupling of audio-visual inputs to movement non-linearly enhances mismatch responses in the auditory cortex.

Their results thus suggest that prediction errors within a given sensory modality are non-trivially influenced by prediction errors from another modality. These findings are novel, interesting, and important, especially in the context of understanding the role of lateral cortico-cortical interactions and in outlining predictive processing as a general theory of cortical function.

In its current form, the manuscript lacks sufficient description of methodological details pertaining to the closed-loop training and the overall experimental design. In several scenarios, while the results per se are convincing and interesting, their exact interpretation is challenging given the uncertainty about the actual experimental protocols (more on this below). Second, the authors are laser-focused on sensorimotor errors (mismatch responses) and focus almost exclusively on what happens when stimuli deviate from the animal's expectations.

While the authors consistently report strong running-onset responses (during open-loop) in the auditory cortex in both auditory and visual versions of the task, they do not discuss their interpretation in the different task settings (see below), nor do they analyze how these responses change during closed-loop i.e. when predictions align with sensory evidence.

However, I believe all my concerns can be easily addressed by additional analyses and incorporation of methodological details in the text.

Major concerns:

(1) Insufficient analysis of audiomotor mismatches in the auditory cortex:

Lack of analysis of the dependence of audiomotor mismatches on the running speed: it would be helpful if the authors could clarify whether the observed audiomotor mismatch responses are just binary or scale with the degree of mismatch (i.e. running speed). Along the same lines, how should one interpret the lack of dependence of the playback halt responses on the running speed? Shouldn't we expect that during playback, the responses of mismatch neurons scale with the running speed?

Slow temporal dynamics of audiomotor mismatches: despite the transient nature of the mismatches (1s), auditory mismatch responses last for several seconds. They appear significantly slower than previous reports for analogous visuomotor mismatches in V1 (by the same group, using the same methods) and even in comparison to the multimodal mismatches within this study (Figure 4C). What might explain this sustained activity? Is it due to a sustained change in the animal's running in response to the auditory mismatch?

(2) Insufficient analysis and discussion of running onset responses during audiomotor sessions: The authors report strong running-onset responses during open-loop in identified mismatch neurons. They also highlight that these responses are in agreement with their model of subtractive prediction error, which relies on subtracting the bottom-up sensory evidence from top-down motor-related predictions. I agree, and, thus, assume that running-onset responses during the open loop in identified 'mismatch' neurons reflect the motor-related predictions of sensory input that the animal has learned to expect. If this is true, one would expect that such running-onset responses should dampen during closed-loop, when sensory evidence matches expectations and therefore cancels out this prediction. It would be nice if the authors test this explicitly by analyzing the running-related activity of the same neurons during closed-loop sessions.

(3) Ambiguity in the interpretation of responses in visuomotor sessions.

Unlike for auditory stimuli, the authors show that there are no obvious responses to visuomotor mismatches or playback halts in the auditory cortex. However, the interpretation of these results is somewhat complicated by the uncertainty related to the training history of these mice. Were these mice exclusively trained on the visuomotor version of the task or also on the auditory version? I could not find this info in the Methods. From the legend for Figure 4D, it appears that the same mice were trained on all versions of the task. Is this the case? If yes, what was the training sequence? Were the mice first trained on the auditory and then the visual version?

The training history of the animals is important to outline the nature of the predictions and mismatch responses that one should expect to observe in the auditory cortex during visuomotor sessions. Depending on whether the mice in Figure 3 were trained on visual only or both visual and auditory tasks, the open-loop running onset responses may have different interpretations.

a) If the mice were trained only on the visual task, how should one interpret the strong running onset responses in the auditory cortex? Are these sensorimotor predictions (presumably of visual stimuli) that are conveyed to the auditory cortex? If so, what may be their role?

b) If the mice were also trained on the auditory version, then a potential explanation of the running-onset responses is that they are audiomotor predictions lingering from the previously learned sensorimotor coupling. In this case, one should expect that in the visual version of the task, these audiomotor predictions (within the auditory cortex) would not get canceled out even during the closed-loop periods. In other words, mismatch neurons should constantly be in an error state (more active) in the closed-loop visuomotor task. Is this the case?

If so, how should one then interpret the lack of a 'visuomotor mismatch' aligned to the visual halts, over and above this background of continuous errors?
As such, the manuscript would benefit from clearly stating in the main text the experimental conditions such as training history, and from discussing the relevant possible interpretations of the responses.

(4) Ambiguity in the interpretation of responses in multimodal versus unimodal sessions.

The authors show that multimodal (auditory + visual) mismatches trigger stronger responses than unimodal mismatches presented in isolation (auditory only or visual only). Further, they find that even though visual mismatches by themselves do not evoke a significant response, co-presentation of visual and auditory stimuli non-linearly augments the mismatch responses suggesting the presence of non-hierarchical interactions between various predictive processing streams.

In my opinion, this is an important result, but its interpretation is nuanced given insufficient details about the experimental design. It appears that responses to unimodal mismatches are obtained from sessions in which only one stimulus is presented (unimodal closed-loop sessions). Is this actually the case? An alternative and perhaps cleaner experimental design would be to create unimodal mismatches within a multimodal closed-loop session while keeping the other stimulus still coupled to the movement.

Given the current experiment design (if my assumption is correct), it is unclear if the multimodal potentiation of mismatch responses is a consequence of nonlinear interactions between prediction/error signals exchanged across visual and auditory modalities. Alternatively, could this result from providing visual stimuli (coupled or uncoupled to movement) on top of the auditory stimuli? If it is the latter, would the observed results still be evidence of non-hierarchical interactions between various predictive processing streams?

Along the same lines, it would be interesting to analyze how the coupling of visual as well as auditory stimuli to movement influences responses in the auditory cortex in close-loop in comparison to auditory-only sessions. Also, do running onset responses change in open-loop in multimodal vs. unimodal playback sessions?

Minor concerns and comments:

(1) Rapid learning of audiomotor mismatches: It is interesting that auditory mismatches are present even on day 1 and do not appear to get stronger with learning (same on day 2). The authors comment that this could be because the coupling is learned rapidly (line 110). How does this compare to the rate at which visuomotor coupling is learned? Is this rapid learning also observable in the animal's behavior i.e. is there a change in running speed in response to the mismatch?

(2) The authors should clarify whether the sound and running onset responses of the auditory mismatch neurons in Figure 2E were acquired during open-loop. This is most likely the case, but explicitly stating it would be helpful.

(3) In lines 87-88, the authors state 'Visual responses also appeared overall similar but with a small increase in strength during running ...'. This statement would benefit from clarification. From Figure S1 it appears that when the animal is sitting there are no visual responses in the auditory cortex. But when the animal is moving, small positive responses are present. Are these actually 'visual' responses - perhaps a visual prediction sent from the visual cortex to the auditory cortex that is gated by movement? If so, are they modulated by features of visual stimuli eg. contrast, intensity? Or, do these responses simply reflect motor-related activity (running)? Would they be present to the same extent in the same neurons even in the dark?

(4) The authors comment in the text (lines 106-107) about cessation of sound amplitude during audiomotor mismatches as being analogous to halting of visual flow in visuomotor mismatches. However, sound amplitude versus visual flow are quite different in nature. In the visuomotor paradigm, the amount of visual stimulation (photons per unit time) does not necessarily change systematically with running speed. Whereas, in the audiomotor paradigm, the SNR of the stimulus itself changes with running speed which may impact the accuracy of predictions. On a broader note, under natural settings, while the visual flow is coupled to movement, sound amplitude may vary more idiosyncratically with movement.

Perhaps such differences might explain why unlike in the case of visual cortex experiments, running speed does not affect the strength of playback responses in the auditory cortex.

Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

This study explores sensory prediction errors in the sensory cortex. It focuses on the question of how these signals are shaped by non-hierarchical interactions, specifically multimodal signals arising from same-level cortical areas. The authors used 2-photon imaging of mouse auditory cortex in head-fixed mice that were presented with sounds and/or visual stimuli while moving on a ball. First, responses to pure tones, visual stimuli, and movement onset were characterized. Then, the authors made the running speed of the mouse predictive of sound intensity and/or visual flow. Mismatches were created through the interruption of sound and/or visual flow for 1 second while the animal moved, disrupting the expected sensory signal given the speed of movement. As a control, the same sensory stimuli triggered by the animal's movement were presented to the animal decoupled from its movement. The authors suggest that auditory responses to the unpredicted silence reflect mismatch responses. That these mismatch responses were enhanced when the visual flow was congruently interrupted, indicates the cross-modal influence of prediction error signals.

This study's strengths are the relevance of the question and the design of the experiment. The authors are experts in the techniques used. The analysis explores neither the full power of the experimental design nor the population activity recorded with 2-photon, leaving open the question of to what extent what the authors call mismatch responses are not sensory responses to sound interruption. The auditory system is sensitive to transitions and indeed responses to the interruption of the sound are similar in quality, if not quantity, in the predictive and the control situation.