Salient experiences are often relived in the mind. Human neuroimaging studies suggest that such experiences drive activity patterns in visual association cortex that are subsequently reactivated during quiet waking. Nevertheless, the circuit-level consequences of such reactivations remain unclear. Here, we imaged hundreds of neurons in visual association cortex across days as mice learned a visual discrimination task. Distinct patterns of neurons were activated by different visual cues. These same patterns were subsequently reactivated during quiet waking in darkness, with higher reactivation rates during early learning and for food-predicting versus neutral cues. Reactivations involving ensembles of neurons encoding both the food cue and the reward predicted strengthening of next-day functional connectivity of participating neurons, while the converse was observed for reactivations involving ensembles encoding only the food cue. We propose that task-relevant neurons strengthen while task-irrelevant neurons weaken their dialog with the network via participation in distinct flavors of reactivation.

显着的经历经常在脑海中重温。人类神经影像学研究表明，此类经历会驱动视觉关联皮层的活动模式，随后在安静的清醒状态下重新激活。然而，这种重新激活的电路级后果仍不清楚。在这里，当小鼠学习视觉辨别任务时，我们对视觉关联皮层中的数百个神经元进行了几天的成像。不同的视觉线索激活了不同的神经元模式。这些相同的模式随后在黑暗中安静醒来时被重新激活，在早期学习期间以及食物预测与中性线索中的重新激活率更高。涉及编码食物线索和奖励的神经元群的重新激活预测参与神经元第二天功能连接的加强，而涉及仅编码食物线索的神经元群的重新激活则观察到相反的情况。我们提出，与任务相关的神经元通过参与不同的重新激活方式而增强，而与任务无关的神经元则削弱与网络的对话。