Learning to associate sensory stimuli with a chosen action involves a dynamic interplay between cortical and thalamic circuits. While the cortex has been widely studied in this respect, how the thalamus encodes learning-related information is still largely unknown. We studied learning-related activity in the medial geniculate body (MGB; Auditory thalamus), targeting mainly the dorsal and medial regions. Using fiber photometry, we continuously imaged population calcium dynamics as mice learned a go/no-go auditory discrimination task. The MGB was tuned to frequency and responded to cognitive features like the choice of the mouse within several hundred milliseconds. Encoding of choice in the MGB increased with learning, and was highly correlated with the learning curves of the mice. MGB also encoded motor parameters of the mouse during the task. These results provide evidence that the MGB encodes task- motor- and learning-related information.

中文翻译：

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听觉丘脑中与学习相关的群体动态

学习将感官刺激与选定的动作联系起来涉及皮质和丘脑回路之间的动态相互作用。虽然皮层在这方面得到了广泛的研究，但丘脑如何编码与学习相关的信息在很大程度上仍是未知的。我们研究了内侧膝状体（MGB；听觉丘脑）中与学习相关的活动，主要针对背侧和内侧区域。使用纤维光度法，当小鼠学习通过/不通过听觉辨别任务时，我们不断地对群体钙动力学进行成像。MGB 被调整到频率，并在几百毫秒内对诸如选择鼠标之类的认知特征做出反应。MGB 中选择的编码随着学习而增加，并且与小鼠的学习曲线高度相关。MGB 还在任务期间对鼠标的运动参数进行编码。