Cross-modal interaction (CMI) could significantly influence the perceptional or decision-making process in many circumstances. However, it remains poorly understood what integrative strategies are employed by the brain to deal with different task contexts. To explore it, we examined neural activities of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of rats performing cue-guided two-alternative forced-choice tasks. In a task requiring rats to discriminate stimuli based on auditory cue, the simultaneous presentation of an uninformative visual cue substantially strengthened mPFC neurons' capability of auditory discrimination mainly through enhancing the response to the preferred cue. Doing this also increased the number of neurons revealing a cue preference. If the task was changed slightly and a visual cue, like the auditory, denoted a specific behavioral direction, mPFC neurons frequently showed a different CMI pattern with an effect of cross-modal enhancement best evoked in information-congruent multisensory trials. In a choice free task, however, the majority of neurons failed to show a cross-modal enhancement effect and cue preference. These results indicate that CMI at the neuronal level is context-dependent in a way that differs from what has been shown in previous studies.

中文翻译：

---

大鼠内侧前额叶皮层中选择依赖的跨模式相互作用


在许多情况下，跨模式交互（CMI）可以显着影响感知或决策过程。然而，人们对大脑采用什么整合策略来处理不同的任务环境仍然知之甚少。为了探索这一点，我们检查了执行提示引导的两种选择强制选择任务的大鼠内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）的神经活动。在一项要求大鼠根据听觉线索辨别刺激的任务中，同时呈现无信息的视觉线索主要通过增强对首选线索的反应来显着增强 mPFC 神经元的听觉辨别能力。这样做还增加了揭示线索偏好的神经元数量。如果任务稍微改变，并且视觉提示（如听觉）表示特定的行为方向，mPFC 神经元经常表现出不同的 CMI 模式，在信息一致的多感觉试验中最能引起跨模式增强的效果。然而，在无选择任务中，大多数神经元未能表现出跨模式增强效应和提示偏好。这些结果表明，神经元水平的 CMI 与上下文相关，这与之前的研究显示的不同。