Learned associations between stimuli in different sensory modalities can shape the way we perceive these stimuli. However, it is not well understood how these interactions are mediated or at what level of the processing hierarchy they occur. Here we describe a neural mechanism by which an auditory input can shape visual representations of behaviorally relevant stimuli through direct interactions between auditory and visual cortices in mice. We show that the association of an auditory stimulus with a visual stimulus in a behaviorally relevant context leads to experience-dependent suppression of visual responses in primary visual cortex (V1). Auditory cortex axons carry a mixture of auditory and retinotopically matched visual input to V1, and optogenetic stimulation of these axons selectively suppresses V1 neurons that are responsive to the associated visual stimulus after, but not before, learning. Our results suggest that cross-modal associations can be communicated by long-range cortical connections and that, with learning, these cross-modal connections function to suppress responses to predictable input.

不同感觉方式中的刺激之间的习得关联可以塑造我们感知这些刺激的方式。然而，目前还不清楚这些交互是如何被调解的，或者它们发生在处理层次结构的哪个级别。在这里，我们描述了一种神经机制，通过该机制，听觉输入可以通过小鼠听觉和视觉皮层之间的直接相互作用来塑造行为相关刺激的视觉表征。我们表明，在行为相关的上下文中，听觉刺激与视觉刺激的关联会导致初级视觉皮层 (V1) 中视觉反应的经验依赖性抑制。听觉皮层轴突携带混合的听觉和视网膜局部匹配的视觉输入到 V1，这些轴突的光遗传学刺激选择性地抑制了 V1 神经元，这些神经元在学习之后而非之前对相关的视觉刺激有反应。我们的结果表明，跨模态关联可以通过远程皮层连接进行交流，并且通过学习，这些跨模态连接可以抑制对可预测输入的反应。