Oddball Evoked Deviant Responses Reflect Complex Context-Dependent Expectations in Mouse V1

Evoked responses in the mouse primary visual cortex can be modulated by the temporal context in which visual inputs are presented. Oddball stimuli embedded in a sequence of regularly repeated visual elements have been shown to drive relatively large deviant responses, a finding that is generally consistent with the theory that cortical circuits implement a form of predictive coding. These results can be confounded by short-term adaptation effects, however, that make interpretation difficult. Here we use various forms of the oddball paradigm to disentangle temporal and ordinal components of the deviant response, showing that it is a complex phenomenon affected by temporal structure, ordinal expectation, and event frequency. Specifically, we use visually evoked potentials to show that deviant responses occur over a large range of time in male and female mice, cannot be explained by a simple adaptation model, scale with predictability, and are modulated by violations of both first- and second-order sequential expectations. We also show that visual sequences can lead to long-term plasticity in some circumstances.