Mouse Higher Visual Areas Provide Both Distributed and Specialized Contributions to Visually Guided Behaviors.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Jin M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7725996 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an important role in controlling voluntary movements by continuously integrating sensory information about body state and the environment. We tested which subregions of the PPC contribute to the processing of target- and body-related visual information while reaching for an object, using a reaching paradigm with 2 types of visual perturbation: displacement of the visual target and displacement of the visual feedback about the hand position. Initially, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to localize putative target areas involved in online corrections of movements in response to perturbations. The causal contribution of these areas to online correction was tested in subsequent neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiments. Robust TMS effects occurred at distinct anatomical sites along the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) and the anterior part of the supramarginal gyrus for both perturbations. TMS over neighboring sites did not affect online control. Our results support the hypothesis that the aIPS is more generally involved in visually guided control of movements, independent of body effectors and nature of the visual information. Furthermore, they suggest that the human network of PPC subregions controlling goal-directed visuomotor processes extends more inferiorly than previously thought. Our results also point toward a good spatial specificity of the TMS effects.
| S-EPMC3116739 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Many studies have argued for distinct but complementary contributions from each hemisphere in the control of movements to visual targets. Investigators have attempted to extend observations from patients with unilateral left- and right-hemisphere damage, to those using neurologically-intact participants, by assuming that each hand has privileged access to the contralateral hemisphere. Previous attempts to illustrate right hemispheric contributions to the control of aiming have focussed on increasing the spatial demands of an aiming task, to attenuate the typical right hand advantages, to try to enhance a left hand reaction time advantage in right-handed participants. These early attempts have not been successful. The present study circumnavigates some of the theoretical and methodological difficulties of some of the earlier experiments, by using three different tasks linked directly to specialized functions of the right hemisphere: bisecting, the gap effect, and visuospatial localization. None of these tasks were effective in reducing the magnitude of left hand reaction time advantages in right handers. Results are discussed in terms of alternatives to right hemispheric functional explanations of the effect, the one-dimensional nature of our target arrays, power and precision given the size of the left hand RT effect, and the utility of examining the proportions of participants who show these effects, rather than exclusive reliance on measures of central tendency and their associated null hypothesis significance tests.
| S-EPMC4551826 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The interplay between an animal's environmental niche and its behavior can influence the evolutionary form and function of its sensory systems. While intraspecific variation in sensory systems has been documented across distant taxa, fewer studies have investigated how changes in behavior might relate to plasticity in sensory systems across developmental time. To investigate the relationships among behavior, peripheral sensory structures, and central processing regions in the brain, we take advantage of a dramatic within-species shift of behavior in a nocturnal, net-casting spider (Deinopis spinosa), where males cease visually-mediated foraging upon maturation. We compared eye diameters and brain region volumes across sex and life stage, the latter through micro-computed X-ray tomography. We show that mature males possess altered peripheral visual morphology when compared to their juvenile counterparts, as well as juvenile and mature females. Matching peripheral sensory structure modifications, we uncovered differences in relative investment in both lower-order and higher-order processing regions in the brain responsible for visual processing. Our study provides evidence for sensory system plasticity when individuals dramatically change behavior across life stages, uncovering new avenues of inquiry focusing on altered reliance of specific sensory information when entering a new behavioral niche.
| S-EPMC5399460 | biostudies-literature
Project description:One of the hallmarks of an eye movement that follows Listing's law is the half-angle rule that says that the angular velocity of the eye tilts by half the angle of eccentricity of the line of sight relative to primary eye position. Since all visually-guided eye movements in the regime of far viewing follow Listing's law (with the head still and upright), the question about its origin is of considerable importance. Here, we provide theoretical and experimental evidence that Listing's law results from a unique motor strategy that allows minimizing ocular torsion while smoothly tracking objects of interest along any path in visual space. The strategy consists in compounding conventional ocular rotations in meridian planes, that is in horizontal, vertical and oblique directions (which are all torsion-free) with small linear displacements of the eye in the frontal plane. Such compound rotation-displacements of the eye can explain the kinematic paradox that the fixation point may rotate in one plane while the eye rotates in other planes. Its unique signature is the half-angle law in the position domain, which means that the rotation plane of the eye tilts by half-the angle of gaze eccentricity. We show that this law does not readily generalize to the velocity domain of visually-guided eye movements because the angular eye velocity is the sum of two terms, one associated with rotations in meridian planes and one associated with displacements of the eye in the frontal plane. While the first term does not depend on eye position the second term does depend on eye position. We show that compounded rotation - displacements perfectly predict the average smooth kinematics of the eye during steady- state pursuit in both the position and velocity domain.
| S-EPMC3994052 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Iontophoretic application of norepinephrine (NE) into the primary visual cortex (V1) in vivo reduces spontaneous and evoked activity, without changing the functional selectivity of cortical units. One possible consequence of this phenomenon is that adrenergic receptors (ARs) regulate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of neural responses in this circuit. However, despite such strong inhibitory action of NE on neuronal firing patterns in V1, its specific action on visual behavior has not been studied. Furthermore, the majority of observations regarding cortical NE from in vivo recordings have been performed in anesthetized animals and have not been tested behaviorally. Here, we describe how micro-infusion of AR agonists/antagonists into mouse V1 influences visually-guided behavior at different contrasts and spatial frequencies. We found that cortical activation of α1- and β-AR produced a substantial reduction in visual discrimination performance at high contrasts and low spatial frequencies, consistent with a divisive effect. This reduction was reversible and was accompanied by a rise in escape latencies as well as an increase in the group averaged choice variance as a function of stimulus contrast. We conclude that pharmacological activation of cortical AR regulates visual perception and adaptive behavior through a divisive gain control of visual responses.
| S-EPMC6435528 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundIntrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) drive an array of non-image-forming (NIF) visual responses including circadian photoentrainment and the pupil light reflex. ipRGCs integrate extrinsic (rod/cone) and intrinsic (melanopsin) photoreceptive signals, but the contribution of cones to ipRGC-dependent responses remains incompletely understood. Given recent data revealing that cone-derived colour signals influence mouse circadian timing and pupil responses in humans, here we set out to investigate the role of colour information in pupil control in mice.ResultsWe first recorded electrophysiological activity from the pretectal olivary nucleus (PON) of anaesthetised mice with a red-shifted cone population (Opn1mwR) and mice lacking functional cones (Cnga3-/-) or melanopsin (Opn1mwR; Opn4-/-). Using multispectral stimuli to selectively modulate the activity of individual opsin classes, we show that PON cells which receive ipRGC input also exhibit robust S- and/or L-cone opsin-driven activity. This population includes many cells where the two cone opsins drive opponent responses (most commonly excitatory/ON responses to S-opsin stimulation and inhibitory/OFF responses to L-opsin stimulation). These cone inputs reliably tracked even slow (0.025 Hz) changes in illuminance/colour under photopic conditions with melanopsin contributions becoming increasingly dominant for higher-contrast/lower temporal frequency stimuli. We also evaluated consensual pupil responses in awake animals and show that, surprisingly, this aspect of physiology is insensitive to chromatic signals originating with cones. Instead, by contrast with the situation in humans, signals from melanopsin and both cone opsins combine in a purely additive manner to drive pupil constriction in mice.ConclusionOur data reveal a key difference in the sensory control of the mouse pupil relative to another major target of ipRGCs-the circadian clock. Whereas the latter uses colour information to help estimate time of day, the mouse pupil instead sums signals across cone opsin classes to provide broadband spectral sensitivity to changes in illumination. As such, while the widespread co-occurrence of chromatic responses and melanopsin input in the PON supports a close association between colour discrimination mechanisms and NIF visual processing, our data suggest that colour opponent PON cells in the mouse contribute to functions other than pupil control.
| S-EPMC6066930 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Voluntary limb modifications must be integrated with basic walking patterns during visually guided walking. In this study we tested whether voluntary gait modifications can become more automatic with practice. We challenged walking control by presenting visual stepping targets that instructed subjects to modify step length from one trial to the next. Our sequence learning paradigm is derived from the serial reaction-time (SRT) task that has been used in upper limb studies. Both random and ordered sequences of step lengths were used to measure sequence-specific and sequence-nonspecific learning during walking. In addition, we determined how age (i.e., healthy young adults vs. children) and biomechanical factors (i.e., walking speed) affected the rate and magnitude of locomotor sequence learning. The results showed that healthy young adults (age 24 ± 5 yr,n= 20) could learn a specific sequence of step lengths over 300 training steps. Younger children (age 6-10 yr,n= 8) had lower baseline performance, but their magnitude and rate of sequence learning were the same compared with those of older children (11-16 yr,n= 10) and healthy adults. In addition, learning capacity may be more limited at faster walking speeds. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that spatial sequence learning can be integrated with a highly automatic task such as walking. These findings suggest that adults and children use implicit knowledge about the sequence to plan and execute leg movement during visually guided walking.
| S-EPMC4869504 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Landing is a challenging aspect of flight because, to land safely, speed must be decreased to a value close to zero at touchdown. The mechanisms by which animals achieve this remain unclear. When landing on horizontal surfaces, honey bees control their speed by holding constant the rate of front-to-back image motion (optic flow) generated by the surface as they reduce altitude. As inclination increases, however, this simple pattern of optic flow becomes increasingly complex. How do honey bees control speed when landing on surfaces that have different orientations? To answer this, we analyze the trajectories of honey bees landing on a vertical surface that produces various patterns of motion. We find that landing honey bees control their speed by holding the rate of expansion of the image constant. We then test and confirm this hypothesis rigorously by analyzing landings when the apparent rate of expansion generated by the surface is manipulated artificially. This strategy ensures that speed is reduced, gradually and automatically, as the surface is approached. We then develop a mathematical model of this strategy and show that it can effectively be used to guide smooth landings on surfaces of any orientation, including horizontal surfaces. This biological strategy for guiding landings does not require knowledge about either the distance to the surface or the speed at which it is approached. The simplicity and generality of this landing strategy suggests that it is likely to be exploited by other flying animals and makes it ideal for implementation in the guidance systems of flying robots.
| S-EPMC3831993 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Animal behavior is motivated by internal drives, such as thirst and hunger, generated in hypothalamic neurons that project widely to many brain areas. We find that water-restricted mice maintain stable, high-level contrast sensitivity and brief reaction time while performing a visual task, but then abruptly stop and become disengaged. Mice consume a significant amount of water when freely provided in their home cage immediately after the task, indicating that disengagement does not reflect cessation of thirst. Neuronal responses of V1 neurons are reduced in the disengaged state, but pupil diameter does not decrease, suggesting that animals' reduced level of arousal does not drive the transition to disengagement. Our findings indicate that satiation level alone does not have an instructive role in visually guided behavior and suggest that animals' behavior is governed by cost-benefit analysis that can override thirst signals.
| S-EPMC7676510 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Little is known about the temporal dynamics of cortical activation during visually guided behavior. We measured changes in brain activity in human posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and premotor cortex (PMC) during saccades and visually guided reaching using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and novel time-frequency reconstructions of MEG (tfMEG) data. Results indicate that early high-gamma activity over the frontal eye fields (FEFs) was present during saccade preparation, and high-gamma activity progressed from the supplementary and FEFs to visual cortex during saccade execution. In contrast, early high-gamma activity over dorsal PMC and late beta activity in primary motor cortex and PPC were unique to reach preparation. During reaching, high-gamma activity progressed from sensorimotor cortex and PMC to parietooccipital cortex. These unique spatial-temporal processing patterns reflect the known connectivity of 2 different sensorimotor networks in macaques. The onset and duration of activity in these areas provides direct evidence for concurrent serial and parallel processing in the human brain during the integration of the sensorimotor inputs necessary for visually guided performance.
| S-EPMC3041007 | biostudies-other