Figure 1.

Paradigm for Behavioral Task and Whole-Cell Recording across Learning

(A) Diagram of the whole-cell (WC) recording setup (left) and schematic of go/no-go task sequence (right; described in text).

(B) Average learning curves for 21 mice for pre-training sessions (day 1, operant conditioning to the CS⁺; day 2, discrimination learning for the first odor pair) and discrimination learning with a novel odor stimulus pair on day 3. Whole-cell recordings were made across this learning epoch. Green dashed line indicates criterion of 80% correct. Error bars show SD.

(C) Example V_m traces during odor stimulus for cells recorded in passive mice, aligned to first inhalation onset.

(D) As for (C), but for cells recorded in learning mice.

(E) Heatmap of V_m responses averaged across all trials for each cell-odor pair, sorted by mean V_m response, for both passive (n = 46) and learning (n = 42) datasets. Black bar indicates odor stimulus, aligned to first inhalation onset.

(F) Left: histograms of average 500 ms V_m responses for passively exposed (top) and learning mice (bottom). Red bars indicate significant excitation; blue bars indicate significant inhibition. Error bars above histogram show mean ± 1 SD. Right: cumulative histograms comparing average V_m responses for passive (gray) and learning (gold) cell-odor pairs. Passive, V_m response = −1.5 ± 1.8 mV; learning, V_m response = −1.7 ± 2.4 mV; p = 0.05, Bartlett test.