Experience-induced drift in the neural coding of individual differences in perception

Abstract

AbstractLike humans, no two rodents like precisely the same tastes. Here, we ask whether these individual differences determine cortical taste responses, late epochs of which “code” palatability. We show that rats’ individual preferences match late-epoch responses with a fidelity significantly higher than that expected on the basis of canonical palatability rankings. A single tasting session, however, induces “neural drift,” such that previously-assessed preferences are no longer reflected in cortical activity.