Differential representation of sensory information and behavioral choice across layers of the mouse auditory cortex

The activity of neurons in sensory areas sometimes covaries with upcoming choices in decision-making tasks. However, the prevalence, causal origin, and functional role of choice-related activity remain controversial. Understanding the circuit-logic of decision signals in sensory areas will require understanding their laminar specificity, but simultaneous recordings of neural activity across the cortical layers in forced-choice discrimination tasks have not yet been performed. Here, we describe neural activity from such recordings in the auditory cortex of mice during a frequency discrimination task with delayed report, which, as we show, requires the auditory cortex. Stimulus-related information was widely distributed across layers but disappeared very quickly after stimulus offset. Choice selectivity emerged toward the end of the delay period—suggesting a top-down origin—but only in the deep layers. Early stimulus-selective and late choice-selective deep neural ensembles were correlated, suggesting that the choice-selective signal fed back to the auditory cortex is not just action specific but develops as a consequence of the sensory-motor contingency imposed by the task.