30The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), controls flexible behavior through stimulus value updating 31 based on stimulus outcome associations, allowing seamless navigation in dynamic sensory 32 environments with changing contingencies. Sensory cue driven responses, primarily studied 33 through behavior, exist in the OFC. However, OFC neurons' sensory response properties, 34 particularly auditory, are unknown, in the mouse, a genetically tractable animal. We show that 35 mouse OFC single neurons have unique auditory response properties showing pure deviance 36 detection and long timescales of adaptation resulting in stimulus-history dependence. Further, 37 we show that OFC auditory responses are shaped by two parallel sources in the auditory 38 thalamus, lemniscal and non-lemniscal. The latter underlies a large component of the observed 39 deviance detection and additionally controls persistent activity in the OFC through the 40 amygdala. The deviant selectivity can serve as a signal for important changes in the auditory 41 environment. Such signals if coupled with persistent activity, obtained by disinhibitory control 42 from the non-lemniscal auditory thalamus or the amygdala, will allow for associations with a 43 delayed outcome related signal, like reward prediction error, and potentially forms the basis of 44 updating stimulus outcome associations in the OFC. Thus the baseline sensory responses allow 45 the behavioral requirement based response modification through relevant inputs from other 46 structures related to reward, punishment, or memory. Thus, alterations in these responses in 47 neurological disorders can lead to behavioral deficits.48 49 50 51 52 53 54Introduction: 55 The OFC, a part of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is involved in flexible behaviour (Miller and 56 Cohen, 2001;Wallis, 2007; Fritz et al., 2010) by encoding specific stimulus-outcome or action-57 outcome expectancies as well as by dynamically revaluing such expectancies on the basis of 58 behavioural demands and motivational states (Delamater, 2007;Rudebeck et al., 2008; Wilson 59 et al., 2014; Fresno et al., 2019). Specific OFC circuits can control specific aspects of flexible 60 behaviour and multiple reinforcement learning processes (Lee et al., 2012; Groman et al., 61 2019). In order for OFC neurons to encode the sensory attributes and subjective value of 62 outcomes associated with external stimuli (Schoenbaum and Roesch, 2005; Delamater, 2007; 63 Ostlund and Balleine, 2007) it requires sensory inputs. It is known that sensory stimulus-64 evoked signals in the OFC can distinguish between appetitive and aversive outcomes (Morrison 65 and Salzman, 2011) associated with the stimuli. Further, the OFC also has the capacity to 66 influence sensory processing by modulating neuronal receptive fields in early sensory cortices, 67 particularly the auditory cortex (Winkowski et al., 2013).
68In order to understand how mechanistically specific stimulus outcome associations are created 69 and how the stimulus evoked OFC respon...