Hamada, Morio; (2025) Neural mechanisms linking sensory expectation to behaviour. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The brain’s ability to anticipate sensory events fundamentally shapes our interactions with the environment, yet the neural mechanisms linking sensory expectation to action remain poorly understood. I developed a novel behavioural task wherein mice learned to anticipate and respond to different visual attributes over time, in order to examine how expectation shapes the transformation of sensory evidence into motor responses. High-density recordings revealed that representations of expected sensory evidence are amplified in secondary motor cortex and striatum, through increases in both baseline activity and stimulus-evoked responses; early visual areas showed no such enhancement. Crucially, while neurons preferring different sensory features could both drive motor preparatory dynamics, expectation determined their relative influence: neural populations tuned to expected stimuli exerted greater control over motor preparation, facilitating rapid reporting of anticipated events. This mechanism explains how the brain maintains distinct sensory representations while harnessing internal knowledge to flexibly control their influence on action.

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