The basal ganglia transform visual identity into behavioral relevance

The basal ganglia are thought to be essential for transforming sensory signals into appropriate actions, yet it remains unclear how this transformation unfolds across their nuclei. We recorded neuronal activity across the striatum, globus pallidus external (GPe), and substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) in mice that were either naive or trained in visuomotor associations. In naive mice, visual stimuli drove responses in all three nuclei. These responses were feature-selective in the striatum but less so in GPe and SNr. Task training potentiated visual responses across the circuit, particularly for stimuli associated with movement. Training affected nuclei differently: while the striatum continued to distinguish between stimuli associated with the same behavioral action, GPe and SNr did not, responding similarly to all "Go" cues while distinguishing them from "No-Go" cues. These results demonstrate that the basal ganglia progressively transform high-dimensional sensory representations into low-dimensional signals of behavioral relevance.