Flexible sensorimotor routing in the rat

We trained rats in a task in which two cued sensorimotor associations could be rapidly reversed, from one trial to the next (Duan et al., Neuron 2015). I will describe behavioral, electrophysiological, optogenetic, and modeling data which suggest that the superior colliculus appears to play a surprisingly cognitive role in enabling the top-down executive control required to perform sensorimotor reversals in the task.