Learned spatiotemporal sequence recognition and prediction in primary visual cortex

Learning to recognize and predict temporal sequences is fundamental to sensory perception and is impaired in several neuropsychiatric disorders, but little is known about where and how this occurs in the brain. We discovered that repeated presentations of a visual sequence over a course of days resulted in evoked response potentiation in mouse V1 that was highly specific for stimulus order and timing. Notably, after V1 was trained to recognize a sequence, cortical activity regenerated the full sequence even when individual stimulus elements were omitted. Our results advance the understanding of how the brain makes 'intelligent guesses' on the basis of limited information to form visual percepts and suggest that it is possible to study the mechanistic basis of this high-level cognitive ability by studying low-level sensory systems.