Spatiotemporal activity patterns of rat cortical neurons predict responsesin a conditioned task

Precise and repeated spike-train timings within and across neurons define s patiotemporal patterns of activity. Although the existence of these pattern s in the brain is well established in several species, there has been no di rect evidence of their influence on behavioral output. To address this ques tion, up to 15 neurons were recorded simultaneously in the auditory cortex of freely moving rats while animals waited for acoustic cues in a Go/NoGo t ask A total of 235 significant patterns were detected during this interval from an analysis of 13 hr of recording involving over 1 million spikes. Of particular interest mere 129 (55%) patterns that were significantly associa ted with the type of response the animal made later, independent of whether the response was that prompted by the cue because the response occurred la ter and the cue was chosen randomly. Of these behavior-predicting patterns, half (59/129) were associated with an enhanced tendency to go in response to the stimulus, and for 11 patterns of this subset, trials including the p attern were followed by significantly faster reaction time than those lacki ng the pattern. The remaining behavior-predicting patterns were associated with an enhanced NoGo tendency, Overall mean discharge rates did not vary a cross trials, Hence, these data demonstrate that particular spatiotemporal patterns predict future behavioral responses. Such presignal activity could form templates for extracting specific sensory information, motor programs prespecifying preference for a particular act, and/or some intermediate, a ssociative brain process.