Behavioral discrimination of optical stimulation enhanced by brain topography

NeuroNexus single-shank 64-channel probes (A1x64-Poly2-6mm-23s-160) were used for multiple oblique penetrations into mouse somatosensory cortex to record single-unit responses while optogenetic stimulation was projected across the recording window. Subsequent findings are published in Lassagne et al in Cell Reports from Luc Estebanez and Valerie Ego-Stengel at Université Paris-Saclay. Their results demonstrate that mice were trained to discriminate the angle of the projected optogenetic bar, but performed worse or were less able to predict success when cortical topography was not continuous (e.g., in the leg area vs barrel cortex).