Fig. 5: BF neurons did not respond to the new light stimulus during initial learning.

a Population activities of BF bursting neurons in light and catch trials in the D₁ session. BF activities from individual animals (N = 6) (top) and group averages (mean ± s.e.m.) (bottom) were plotted separately based on trial type (light or catch) and behavioral response (licking at the right reward port or not), and aligned at three key behavioral events in each trial: stimulus onset, fixation port exit, and trial outcome. The solid and dashed lines below the top panels indicate the line symbols used in the bottom panels. Horizontal lines in bottom panels indicate significant differences in population BF activities between light lick and catch lick trials (solid red), or between lick and no lick trials (dashed red) (statistical significance defined as p < 0.01 for 3 consecutive steps using two-sided paired t-test for each 100 ms sliding window and 10 ms step). Symbols were adapted from Avila and Lin²². b Comparison of BF activities between the four trial combinations during four time windows (I-IV). There was no difference in BF activities before exiting the fixation port (I & II). In contrast, BF activities increased in both light and catch lick trials after exiting from the fixation port (III & IV). BF activities in light lick and catch lick trials were similar before the trial outcome (IV). (Repeated measures ANOVA for group comparisons and post-hoc two-sided paired t-test, N = 6). c Comparison of BF activities between light and catch trials (top) or between lick and no lick trials (bottom) using sliding window ROC analysis, aligned at the three behavioral events. Only significant (p < 0.001, two-sided) area-under-curve (AUC) values were shown. BF activities could not reliably discriminate between light and catch trials before the receipt of reward. In contrast, BF activities could reliably discriminate between lick and no lick trials after exiting the fixation port.