Frontal Cortex Gates Distractor Stimulus Encoding in Target Sensory Cortex

Suppressing behavioral responses to distractor stimuli is a fundamental cognitive process, essential for performing goal-directed tasks. A common framework for the neuronal implementation of distractor suppression is the attenuation of distractor stimuli from early sensory to higher-order processing. However, details of the localization and mechanisms of attenuation are poorly understood. In this study, we trained mice to selectively respond (lick) to whisker deflections from one whisker field and ignore identical deflections from the opposite whisker field. We found that suppression of frontal cortex, aligned to the target stimulus or the distractor stimulus, increases responses to distractors (false alarms). By simultaneously recording spiking activity in the mouse whisker region of primary somatosensory cortex (S1), we found that frontal cortex selectively suppresses the neuronal encoding of distractor stimuli in target-aligned S1. Frontal cortex decorrelates the encoding of target and distractor stimuli in single units, thereby increasing stimulus selectivity across the population of target-aligned S1 neurons. Even before stimulus onset, effects of frontal cortex on S1 were robust and context-dependent, indicating proactive modulation. Overall, our study provides important mechanistic details about the roles of frontal cortex in gating sensory responses in sensory cortex. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.