{"doi":"10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114672","title":"Modulation of cortical representations of sensory and contextual information underlies aversive associative learning","abstract":"Cortical neurons encode both sensory and contextual information, yet it remains unclear how experiences modulate these cortical representations. Here, we demonstrate that trace eyeblink conditioning (TEC), an aversive associative-learning paradigm linking conditioned (CS) with unconditioned stimuli (US), finely tunes cortical coding at both population and single-neuron levels. Initially, we show that the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is necessary for TEC acquisition, as evidenced by local muscimol administration. At the population level, TEC enhances activity in a small subset (∼20%) of CS- or US-responsive primary neurons (rPNs) while diminishing activity in non-rPNs, including locomotion-tuned or unresponsive PNs. Crucially, TEC learning modulates the encoding of sensory versus contextual information in single rPNs: CS-responsive neurons become less responsive, while US-responsive neurons gain responses to CS. Moreover, we find that the cholinergic pathway, via nicotinic receptors, underlies TEC-induced modulations. These findings suggest that experiences dynamically tune cortical representations through cholinergic pathways.","journal":"Cell Reports","year":2024,"id":466239,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9522,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":376592,"name":"Qian‐Quan Sun","orcid":"0000-0002-5807-9327","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1298018,"name":"Jiaman Dai","orcid":"0000-0002-4977-4774","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":55,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:04:54.606394Z","pmid":"39196779","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}