Flexible integration of natural stimuli by auditory cortical neurons

Neurons have rich input-output functions for processing and combining their inputs. Although many experiments characterize these functions by directly activating synaptic inputs on dendrites in vitro, the integration of spatiotemporal inputs representing real-world stimuli is less well studied. Using ethologically relevant stimuli, we study neuronal integration in relation to Boolean AND and OR operations thought to be important for pattern recognition. We recorded single-unit responses in the mouse auditory cortex to pairs of ultrasonic mouse vocalization (USV) syllables. We observed a range of integration responses, spanning the sublinear to supralinear regimes, with many responses resembling the MAX-like function, an instantiation of the OR operation. Integration was more MAX-like for strongly activating features, and more AND-like for spectrally distinct inputs. Importantly, single neurons could implement more than one integration function, in contrast to artificial networks which typically fix activation functions across all units and inputs. To understand the mechanism underlying the flexibility and heterogeneity in neuronal integration, we modelled how dendritic properties could influence the integration of inputs with complex spectrotemporal structure. Our results link nonlinear integration in dendrites to single-neuron computations for pattern recognition. Significance statementSensory neurons compute over their inputs, combining them in ways to achieve selectivity and invariance for pattern recognition. Using real-world stimuli, we show that single cortical neurons are flexible, being capable of implementing more than one computation, unlike artificial neural-network units with fixed activation functions. We investigate this flexibility by modeling how synaptic activation patterns of real-world stimuli affect dendritic integration and the resultant neuronal computation. Our work bridges the gap between biophysical mechanisms and computation, linking neuronal input integration to pattern recognition.