The causal role of auditory cortex in auditory working memory

Abstract

Working memory (WM), the ability to actively hold information in memory over a delay period of seconds, is a fundamental constituent of cognition. Delay-period activity in sensory cortices has been observed in WM tasks, but whether and when the activity plays a functional role for memory maintenance remains unclear. Here we investigated the causal role of auditory cortex (AC) for memory maintenance in mice performing an auditory WM task. Electrophysiological recordings revealed that AC neurons were active not only during the presentation of the auditory stimulus but also early in the delay period. Furthermore, optogenetic suppression of neural activity in AC during the stimulus epoch and early delay period impaired WM performance, whereas suppression later in the delay period did not. Thus, AC is essential for information encoding and maintenance in auditory WM task, especially during the early delay period.

Data availability

Data deposited in Dryad Digital Repository, accessible here: doi:10.5061/dryad.8gtht76nf. Reviewer Link: https://datadryad.org/stash/share/izZSpsIhujfbQbO8rAcXZ54ZBhyev1JIV1RHfpIaV3U

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Liping Yu

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Jiawei Hu

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Chenlin Shi

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Li Zhou

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Maozhi Tian

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Jiping Zhang

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Jinghong Xu

    School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
    For correspondence
    jhxu@bio.ecnu.edu.cn
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2864-4196

Funding

Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (20ZR1417800)

  • Jinghong Xu

National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970925)

  • Liping Yu

Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (19ZR1416500)

  • Liping Yu

National Natural Science Foundation of China (31400944)

  • Jinghong Xu

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Brice Bathellier, CNRS, France

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the US National Institutes of Health. The protocol was approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of East China Normal University, Shanghai, China (m20160302).

Version history

  1. Received: October 29, 2020
  2. Accepted: April 28, 2021
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: April 29, 2021 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: June 1, 2021 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2021, Yu et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Liping Yu
  2. Jiawei Hu
  3. Chenlin Shi
  4. Li Zhou
  5. Maozhi Tian
  6. Jiping Zhang
  7. Jinghong Xu
(2021)
The causal role of auditory cortex in auditory working memory
eLife 10:e64457.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64457

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64457

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