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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 20, 2025

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity

Published on: May 7, 2017

Striatal activity topographically reflects cortical activity.

Andrew J Peters¹, Julie M J Fabre², Nicholas A Steinmetz^3,2,4

¹UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London, UK. peters.andrew.j@gmail.com.

|January 21, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The cortex precisely maps to the dorsal striatum, influencing behavior. This study reveals a causal, topographic relationship between cortical and striatal activity, crucial for sensorimotor processing.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Systems Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

The cortex projects topographically to the dorsal striatum to regulate behavior.
Previous studies reported differing relationships between cortical and striatal activity concerning sensorimotor events.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the spatiotemporal precision, topography, causality, and behavioral invariance of the relationship between cortical and striatal activity.
To elucidate the functional mapping of cortical inputs onto striatal circuits during a visually guided task.

Main Methods:

Simultaneous recording of neural activity across large cortical and dorsal striatal regions in mice performing a visually guided task.
Analysis of striatal activity gradients and their correlation with cortical activity.
Causal manipulation using inactivation of the visual cortex to assess the role of cortical inputs.

Main Results:

Striatal activity exhibited a mediolateral gradient, with behavioral correlates progressing from visual cue to response to reward.
Summed striatal activity closely mirrored topographically associated cortical activity, irrespective of task engagement.
Inactivation of the visual cortex causally abolished striatal responses to visual stimuli.
Striatal visual responses scaled with training, while cortical activity remained unchanged.

Conclusions:

The relationship between cortical and striatal activity is spatiotemporally precise, topographic, causal, and invariant to behavior.
Cortical inputs causally drive striatal activity, forming a consistent and scalable topographical map.
Striatal activity reflects a dynamic yet precise representation of cortical processing relevant to behavior.