Diversity of omission responses to visual images across brain-wide regions | Science Advances

An organism’s survival depends on its ability to anticipate forthcoming events and detect discrepancies between the expected and actual sensory inputs. We analyzed data from mice performing a visual go/no-go change-detection task where the sequence of stimulus presentations was intermittently interrupted by omission of a stimulus. The omission of a visual stimulus did not elicit discernable spiking responses in visual cortical neurons. Instead, firing rates between image presentations, including the omission period, ramped linearly and without interruption at the time of the omitted image. Several neuron types in visual cortex neurons were identified with various responses to images and their omissions. A minority of cells in nonvisual areas, including the hippocampus, increased their firing rates at the omitted stimulus onset even when these neurons did not respond to the images. Our study elucidates the origin of omission responses in the visual cortex and sheds light on the role of hippocampal and subcortical circuits in omission detection.