Tactile sensory information from facial whiskers provides nocturnal tunnel-dwelling rodents,
including mice and rats, with important spatial and textural information about their immediate …

Humans and many other animals have an enormous capacity to learn about sensory stimuli
and to master new skills. However, many of the mechanisms that enable us to learn remain …

There is as yet no consensus concerning the neural basis of perception and how it operates
at a mechanistic level. We found that Ca2+ activity in the apical dendrites of a subset of layer …

Many theories of brain function propose that activity in sparse subsets of neurons underlies
perception and action. To place a lower bound on the amount of neural activity that can be …

Optogenetics allows manipulations of genetically and spatially defined neuronal populations
with excellent temporal control. However, neurons are coupled with other neurons over …

Primary sensory cortex is thought to process incoming sensory information, while decision
variables important for driving behavior are assumed to arise downstream in the processing …

In vivo calcium imaging from axons provides direct interrogation of afferent neural activity,
informing the neural representations that a local circuit receives. Unlike in somata and …

Many of our daily activities, such as riding a bike to work or reading a book in a noisy cafe,
and highly skilled activities, such as a professional playing a tennis match or a violin …

Subdivisions of mouse whisker somatosensory thalamus project to cortex in a region-
specific and layer-specific manner. However, a clear anatomical dissection of these …

Prior studies have demonstrated that correlated variability changes with cognitive processes
that improve perceptual performance. We tested whether correlated variability covaries with …