The dorsolateral striatum encodes a temporal basis for the organization of behavior

To behave adaptively, the brain must register temporal structure in the environment and use it to organize behavior. The dorsolateral striatum (DLS) integrates sensorimotor input, and is necessary for accurate timing and structuring behavior in general. However, if DLS provides the basis for mapping temporal features in the environment to behavior, its activity should predict variation in that mapping. A reanalysis of DLS population activity in rats comparing the duration of two sequentially presented vibratory stimuli revealed a striking correspondence between neural activity and behavior. Varying vibration intensity of the second stimulus induced systematic biases in temporal judgments, and corresponding biases in multiple features of DLS activity during stimulus presentation, including population coding of time. In contrast, the same intensity manipulations applied to the first stimulus affected neither behavior nor neural activity. Furthermore, neuronal response profiles were best described as a continuum, arguing against hypotheses where categories of responses, e.g., ramping activity, selectively underpin temporal processing. These data represent important additional evidence that striatal population dynamics support the organization of behavior by mapping temporal information to action.