TY  - JOUR
TI  - Cortical State Fluctuations during Sensory Decision Making
AV  - public
Y1  - 2020/12/21/
EP  - 4955.e7
KW  - cortical states
KW  -  widefield imaging
KW  -  sensory processing
KW  -  decision making
N2  - In many behavioral tasks, cortex enters a desynchronized state where low-frequency fluctuations in population activity are suppressed. The precise behavioral correlates of desynchronization and its global organization are unclear. One hypothesis holds that desynchronization enhances stimulus coding in the relevant sensory cortex. Another hypothesis holds that desynchronization reflects global arousal, such as task engagement. Here, we trained mice on tasks where task engagement could be distinguished from sensory accuracy. Using widefield calcium imaging, we found that performance-related desynchronization was global and correlated better with engagement than with accuracy. Consistent with this link between desynchronization and engagement, rewards had a long-lasting desynchronizing effect. To determine whether engagement-related state changes depended on the relevant sensory modality, we trained mice on visual and auditory tasks and found that in both cases desynchronization was global, including regions such as somatomotor cortex. We conclude that variations in low-frequency fluctuations are predominately global and related to task engagement.
ID  - discovery10124253
PB  - CELL PRESS
IS  - 24
N1  - Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
SP  - 4944
VL  - 30
JF  - Current Biology
A1  - Jacobs, EAK
A1  - Steinmetz, NA
A1  - Peters, AJ
A1  - Carandini, M
A1  - Harris, KD
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.067
ER  -