Figure 7.

Decoding accuracy of sucrose concentrations/palatability by different NAcSh populations. (A) The temporal decoding dynamics in the three brief-access tests of the five sucrose concentrations (palatability) achieved by the five distinct populations. A sixth group is comprised of neurons that do not belong to any population were named “Not modulated” (gray lines). Values are the average and sem of single trials that were correctly classified around RS (time = 0 s). Thicker lines in all panels indicate significantly above chance level (for five stimuli = 20%, horizontal dashed lines) as ascertained by a one group right-tailed t-test (p < 0.05). (B) The time course of the decoding accuracy of sucrose concentrations/palatability achieved by pooling all groups (all modulated neurons in orange) and the decoding reached by the licking responses per se (black; oromotor palatability). (C) Overall decoding during the Reward epoch (mean ± sem) in the three tests as a function of all the Modulated neurons (orange bars and horizontal dashed lines) and the same group but without the participation of each of the populations. Horizontal green lines are the average levels of decoding achieved by dropping (100 times) a random population of neurons as large as the Palatability population. ^*means significant differences with the Modulated population at the alpha level of 0.05.