A naturalistic visual task for studying distance estimation in the mouse

项目摘要 视觉通过提供有关环境的感官信息， 例如到相关对象的距离。视觉感知的一个关键特征是积极探索 通过眼睛、头部和身体的平移来呈现视觉场景。视觉皮层被认为 联合收割机将这些自发的运动信号与视觉输入结合起来， 环境保护虽然最近的研究表明，小鼠V1神经元中有很大一部分 编码运动信息，而不是简单地充当视觉特征检测器，V1功能模型 在很大程度上忽略了运动传出和感觉传入的贡献。我们的目的是阐明 从运动视差研究深度知觉的神经机制 基本的视觉计算，结合观察者的自我运动和视网膜图像位移， 计算到环境中物体的距离。 我们将首先调整行为学，自由移动沙鼠/大鼠距离估计任务，以小鼠， 确定老鼠在跳过缝隙时用来测量深度的视觉线索的类型。然后我们将 操纵视觉皮层的活动及其来自大脑区域的传递运动相关信息的输入 信号，以测试它们在运动视差距离估计中的作用。的 在R21应用中提出的实验为神经系统的未来研究提供了基础。 电路级，以确定视觉和运动信号是如何集成的计算， 距离估计，特别是在自然环境中。

PROJECT SUMMARY Vision facilitates navigation through the world by providing sensory information about the environment, such as the distance to relevant objects. A key feature of visual perception is the active exploration of the visual scene through translation of the eyes, head, and body. Visual cortex has been proposed to combine these self-generated motor signals with visual input to compute information about objects in the environment. While recent studies have shown that a significant fraction of neurons in mouse V1 encode movement information and do not simply act as visual feature detectors, models of V1 function have largely ignored motor efference and sensory reafferent contributions. We aim to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying active vision by investigating depth perception from motion parallax - a fundamental visual computation that combines observer self-motion and retinal image displacement to calculate the distance to objects in the environment. We will first adapt an ethological, freely-moving gerbil/rat distance estimation task to mice in order to determine the types of visual cues mice use to gauge depth when jumping across a gap. We will then manipulate the activity of visual cortex and its inputs from brain regions conveying movement-related signals, in order to test their roles specifically in distance estimation from motion parallax. The experiments proposed in this R21 application provide the foundation for future studies at the neural circuit level, to determine how visual and movement signals are integrated for computations such as distance estimation, particularly in a natural context.