State-dependent modulation of cross-area sensory processing in mouse neocortex

In trained mice performing an auditory–whisker two-alternative choice task, an optimal stimulus-guided latent state is linked to stronger sensory representation in S1 and PPC.

• Why it matters: Behavioral state can change how identical sensory inputs are processed, but it is unclear how this reshapes sensory coding and information routing across distributed cortical areas.
• What they did: Mice were trained on the cue-discrimination task while two-photon calcium imaging (GCaMP6f) recorded S1 and PPC populations; a GLM-HMM identified three latent states and quantified coding plus bottom-up transfer from S1 to PPC-A.
• The result: The optimal state showed stronger S1→PPC-A information transfer, whereas two biased states showed weaker sensory coding and relatively greater involvement of PPC-RL, affecting both task-related and task-orthogonal activity.

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