“…Despite the therapeutic capacity of the ZI (Ossowska, 2020), and its central involvement in numerous behaviors including sleep (Liu et al, 2017), feeding (Zhang and van den Pol, 2017), pain (Masri et al, 2009), novelty-seeking (Ahmadlou et al, 2021), anxiety (Li et al, 2021) and threat memory (Zhou et al, 2018), the function and information content of its projection to neocortex has remained elusive. This study identifies LRI ZI afferents as a source of remarkably precise auditory information and reinforcement signals in ACx which selectively connect to INs, widely integrate information from across the neuroaxis, are essential for associative memory and undergo complex, bidirectional plasticity during and after learning.…”