Reward modulation of primary visual cortex and basal forebrain activity

MARIA FLORENCIA SANTOS; CAMILA L. ZOLD

Congreso; SAN; 2022

The primary visual cortex (V1) neuronal activity encodes basic properties of visual stimuli, such as orientation and direction of movement. After sensory processing in V1 other brain areas would store the information in working memory, give it functional relevance and predictive value, and trigger appropriate behaviors. Historically it has been proposed that the plasticity of the visual system is minimized during adulthood in order to ensure reliable and reproducible sensory coding. However, experience dependent plasticity has been observed in V1 as a way to improve visual perception. In addition, recent studies show that V1 neural plasticity can also be interpreted in a reinforcement-learning framework. When rodents experience an association between a visual stimulus and a contingent future reward, a proportion of V1 neurons develop reward timing activity. It has been shown that  cholinergic projections from the basal forebrain (BF) are necessary and sufficient to induce reward timing activity in V1. Also, it has been shown that BF neurons respond to reward acquisition. However, little is known about whether reward timing activity evolvessimultaneously in the BF and V1 during learning.