The publication by Gilady and Mizrahi examines multi-sensory representation, asking how the brain represents newly learned, multisensory interactions. Specifically, the researchers asked if a response of an auditory cortex neuron could be modulated by learning that the auditory stimulus was predicted by an odor stimulus.
The researchers developed a novel auditory discrimination task. In the task, mice learned that one odor predicts an upcoming sound with low probability, and another odor predicts the nature of an upcoming sound with high probability. Figure 2 shows that the learned odors cause a modulation of neuronal activity in auditory cortex, which is correlated with the behavior of the animal. This result suggests that learning prompts novel multisensory interactions as early as the primary sensory cortex.
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