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Mouse visual cortex contains a region of enhanced spatial resolution.

ABSTRACT: The representation of space in mouse visual cortex was thought to be relatively uniform. Here we reveal, using population receptive-field (pRF) mapping techniques, that mouse visual cortex contains a region in which pRFs are considerably smaller. This region, the "focea," represents a location in space in front of, and slightly above, the mouse. Using two-photon imaging we show that the smaller pRFs are due to lower scatter of receptive-fields at the focea and an over-representation of binocular regions of space. We show that receptive-fields of single-neurons in areas LM and AL are smaller at the focea and that mice have improved visual resolution in this region of space. Furthermore, freely moving mice make compensatory eye-movements to hold this region in front of them. Our results indicate that mice have spatial biases in their visual processing, a finding that has important implications for the use of the mouse model of vision.

SUBMITTER: van Beest EH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8242089 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mouse visual cortex contains a region of enhanced spatial resolution.

van Beest Enny H EH Mukherjee Sreedeep S Kirchberger Lisa L Schnabel Ulf H UH van der Togt Chris C Teeuwen Rob R M RRM Barsegyan Areg A Meyer Arne F AF Poort Jasper J Roelfsema Pieter R PR Self Matthew W MW

Nature communications 20210629 1

The representation of space in mouse visual cortex was thought to be relatively uniform. Here we reveal, using population receptive-field (pRF) mapping techniques, that mouse visual cortex contains a region in which pRFs are considerably smaller. This region, the "focea," represents a location in space in front of, and slightly above, the mouse. Using two-photon imaging we show that the smaller pRFs are due to lower scatter of receptive-fields at the focea and an over-representation of binocular ...[more]

PMID: 34188047

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Project description:UnlabelledWe do not fully understand how behavioral state modulates the processing and transmission of sensory signals. Here, we studied the cortical representation of the retinal image in mice that spontaneously switched between a state of rest and a constricted pupil, and one of active locomotion and a dilated pupil, indicative of heightened attention. We measured the selectivity of neurons in primary visual cortex for orientation and spatial frequency, as well as their response gain, in these two behavioral states. Consistent with prior studies, we found that preferred orientation and spatial frequency remained invariant across states, whereas response gain increased during locomotion relative to rest. Surprisingly, relative gain, defined as the ratio between the gain during locomotion and the gain during rest, was not uniform across the population. Cells tuned to high spatial frequencies showed larger relative gain compared with those tuned to lower spatial frequencies. The preferential enhancement of high-spatial-frequency information was also reflected in our ability to decode the stimulus from population activity. Finally, we show that changes in gain originate from shifts in the operating point of neurons along a spiking nonlinearity as a function of behavioral state. Differences in the relative gain experienced by neurons with high and low spatial frequencies are due to corresponding differences in how these cells shift their operating points between behavioral states.Significance statementHow behavioral state modulates the processing and transmission of sensory signals remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the mean firing rate and neuronal gain increase during locomotion as a result in a shift of the operating point of neurons. We define relative gain as the ratio between the gain of neurons during locomotion and rest. Interestingly, relative gain is higher in cells with preferences for higher spatial frequencies than those with low-spatial-frequency selectivity. This means that, during a state of locomotion and heightened attention, the population activity in primary visual cortex can support better spatial acuity, a phenomenon that parallels the improved spatial resolution observed in human subjects during the allocation of spatial attention.

Project description:In sensory cortex of brain it is often the case that neurons are spatially organized by their functional properties. A hallmark of primary visual cortex (V1) in higher mammals is a columnar functional map, where neurons tuned to different stimuli features are regularly organized in space. However, rodent visual cortex is at odds with this rule and lacks any spatially ordered functional architecture, and rather neuron feature preference is haphazardly organized in patterns termed 'salt-and-pepper'. This sharp contrast in feature organization between the visual cortices of rodents and higher mammals has been a persistent mystery, fueled in part by abundant evidence of conserved cortical physiology between species. In this work, we applied a novel GCaMP indicator that are localized in the nucleus of neurons during two-photon imaging in mouse V1, which enabled us to overcome most spurious spatially correlated activity due to fluorescence contamination, and to ensure a faithful observation of functional organization over space. We found that the orientation tuning properties of distant neuron pairs ( >20μm ) are irregularly and randomly organized, while neuron pairs that are extremely close (<20μm) have strongly correlated orientation tuning, indicating a narrow yet strong spatially clustered organization of orientation preference, which we term 'micro-clustered' organization. Exploring a circuit-based model of recurrently coupled mouse V1 we derived two key predictions for the 'micro-cluster': spatially localized recurrent connections over a comparable narrow spatial scale, and common relative spatial spreads of balanced excitation and inhibition in the network over broad spatial scales. These predictions are validated by both anatomical and optogenetic-based physiological circuit mapping experiments. Altogether, our work takes an important step in building a circuit-based theory of visual processing in mouse V1 over spatial scales that are often ignored, yet contain powerful synaptic interactions.

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Mouse visual cortex contains a region of enhanced spatial resolution.

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Mouse visual cortex contains a region of enhanced spatial resolution.

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