
==== Front
bioRxiv
BIORXIV
bioRxiv
2692-8205
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

39131281
10.1101/2024.07.17.603927
preprint
4
Article
Reward history guides focal attention in whisker somatosensory cortex
Ramamurthy Deepa L http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4064-5148

Rodriguez Lucia
Cen Celine
Li Siqian
Chen Andrew
Feldman Daniel E http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4646-8170

09 9 2024
2024.07.17.603927https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/2024.07.17.603927
nihpp-2024.07.17.603927.pdf
Prior reward is a potent cue for attentional capture, but the underlying neurobiology is largely unknown. In a novel whisker touch detection task, we show that mice flexibly shift attention between specific whiskers on a trial-by-trial timescale, guided by the recent history of stimulus-reward association. Two-photon calcium imaging and spike recordings revealed a robust neurobiological correlate of attention in the somatosensory cortex (S1), boosting sensory responses to the attended whisker in L2/3 and L5, but not L4. Attentional boosting in L2/3 pyramidal cells was topographically precise and whisker-specific, and shifted receptive fields toward the attended whisker. L2/3 VIP interneurons were broadly activated by whisker stimuli, motion, and arousal but did not carry a whisker-specific attentional signal, and thus did not mediate spatially focused tactile attention. Together, these findings establish a new model of focal attention in the mouse whisker tactile system, showing that the history of stimuli and rewards in the recent past can dynamically engage local modulation in cortical sensory maps to guide flexible shifts in ongoing behavior.
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pmc
