Sensory-to-Category Transformation via Dynamic Reorganization of Ensemble Structures in Mouse Auditory Cortex

The ability to group physical stimuli into behaviorally relevant categories is fundamental to perception and cognition. Despite a large body of work on stimulus categorization at the behavioral and cognitive levels, little is known about the underlying mechanisms at the neuronal level. Here, combining mouse auditory psychophysical behavior and in vivo two-photon imaging from the auditory cortex, we investigate how sensory-to-category transformation is implemented by cortical neurons during a stimulus categorization task. Distinct from responses during passive listening, many neurons exhibited emergent selectivity to stimuli near the category boundary during task performance, reshaping local tuning maps; other neurons became more selective to category membership of stimuli. At the population level, local cortical ensembles robustly encode category information and predict trial-by-trial decisions during task performance. Our data uncover a task-dependent dynamic reorganization of cortical response patterns serving as a neural mechanism for sensory-to-category transformation during perceptual decision-making.