Oddball evoked deviant responses reflect complex context dependent expectations in mouse V1

Abstract

Evoked responses in the mouse primary visual cortex can be modulated by the temporal context in which visual inputs are presented. Oddball stimuli embedded in a sequence of regularly repeated visual elements have been shown to drive relatively large deviant responses, a finding that is generally consistent with the theory that cortical circuits implement a form of predictive coding. These results can be confounded by short-term adaptation effects, however, that make interpretation difficult. Here we use various forms of the oddball paradigm to disentangle temporal and ordinal components of the deviant response, showing that it is a complex phenomenon affected by temporal structure, ordinal expectation, and event frequency. Specifically, we use visually evoked potentials to show that deviant responses occur over a large range of time in male and female mice, cannot be explained by a simple adaptation model, scale with predictability, and are modulated by violations of both first and second-order sequential expectations. We also show that visual sequences can lead to long-term plasticity in some circumstances.

Significance Statement Visual experience and temporal context can modulate evoked responses in mouse V1. There remains disagreement about whether this reflects predictive coding in visual circuits and whether visual mismatched negativity, which has important cross-over implications for human clinical work, constitutes evidence supporting this theory or reflects simple neural adaptation. This work strongly supports the former interpretation by demonstrating complex experience-dependent deviant responses that cannot be easily explained by a simple adaptation model. We use statistically rigorous analysis of the local field potential to show that oddball evoked deviance signals reflect relative timing, event frequency, 1^st and 2^nd order sequence expectations and scale as a function of event probability.