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bioRxiv · 10.64898/2025.12.19.695511

Canonical cortical architecture supports the emergence of noise-invariant auditory representations

Suarez Omedas, T.·Williamson, R. S.
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Abstract

Neurons in the auditory system must represent behaviorally relevant sounds in the presence of background noise (BN) to support noise-invariant perception and behavior. Although primary auditory cortex (ACtx) has been implicated in constructing noise-invariant representations, it remains unclear which excitatory subpopulations within ACtx carry out this transformation from noise-dependent to noise-invariant coding. To address this, we presented pure tones with and without continuous BN to head-fixed mice and used two-photon calcium imaging to record sound-evoked activity from three major excitatory subpopulations in ACtx: layer (L)2/3 intratelencephalic (IT) neurons, L5 IT neurons, and L5 extratelencephalic (ET) neurons. L2/3 IT neurons exhibited strong noise dependence at the level of single-neuron responses, pairwise interactions, and population representations. In contrast, deep-layer pathways showed greater noise invariance, with L5 IT neurons preserving stable representations most consistently and L5 ET neurons exhibiting more limited invariance at the population level. These findings reveal a functional division of labor in ACtx, in which superficial neurons remain noise-dependent and deep-layer broadcast pathways, particularly L5 IT, preferentially carry noise-invariant representations, suggesting that excitatory subpopulations contribute differentially to the construction and propagation of noise-invariant codes.

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Suarez Omedas, T., Williamson, R. S.. 2025-12-22. Canonical cortical architecture supports the emergence of noise-invariant auditory representations. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.19.695511

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