Data from: Cortico-Fugal regulation of predictive coding

Sensory systems must account for both contextual factors and prior experience to adaptively engage with the dynamic external environment. In the central auditory system, neurons modulate their responses to sounds based on statistical context. These response modulations can be understood through a hierarchical predictive coding lens: responses to repeated stimuli are progressively decreased, in a process known as repetition suppression, whereas unexpected stimuli produce a prediction error signal. Prediction error incrementally increases along the auditory hierarchy from the inferior colliculus (IC) to the auditory cortex (AC), suggesting that these regions may engage in hierarchical predictive coding. A potential substrate for top-down predictive cues is the massive set of descending projections from the auditory cortex to subcortical structures. To assess the role of these projections in predictive coding, we optogenetically suppressed the auditory cortico-collicular feedback in awake mice while recording responses from IC neurons to stimuli designed to test prediction error and repetition suppression. Suppression of the cortico-collicular pathway led to a decrease in prediction error in IC. Repetition suppression was unaffected by cortico-collicular inactivation, suggesting that this metric may reflect fatigue of bottom-up sensory inputs rather than predictive processing. We also discovered populations of IC neurons that exhibit repetition enhancement, an increase in firing with stimulus repetition, and error suppression, a stronger response to a tone in a predictable rather than unpredictable context. Cortico-collicular suppression led to a decrease in repetition enhancement in the central nucleus and a reduction in error suppression in shell regions of IC. These changes in predictive coding metrics arose from bidirectional modulations in the response to the standard and deviant contexts, such that neurons in IC responded more similarly to each context in the absence of cortical input. Our results demonstrate that the auditory cortex provides cues about the statistical context of sound to subcortical brain regions via direct feedback, regulating processing of both prediction and repetition.Funding provided by: National Institutes of HealthCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000002Award Number