The flow of information from mouse primary visual cortex during visual perceptual discrimination

视觉知觉辨别过程中小鼠初级视觉皮层的信息流

• 批准号: RGPIN-2022-04170
• 负责人: Resulaj, Arbora
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=746010
• 关键词: flow; information; mouse; primary; visual

The primary visual cortex plays a critical role in visual perception. This critical role is thought to be in part due to its position in the visual processing hierarchy. It is the first brain area in the neocortex to receive visual input, and it distributes this information to more than eighteen brain areas. Yet, little is known about which other brain areas are involved in visual perception, and further, which projections from the primary visual cortex are involved, which limits our understanding of the mechanisms by which the primary visual cortex contributes to visual perception. Here we propose to assess which cortical and subcortical areas are involved in visual perceptual discrimination. Further, we will assess whether the information flows to these brain areas via the direct projections from the primary visual cortex. In our previous work, we developed a visual discrimination task for mice. We showed that lesion of the primary visual cortex, or alternatively optogenetic silencing, causes the performance accuracy of mice to significantly drop. Importantly, mice still made choices and their motor functions were intact, suggesting that V1 had a solely perceptual role. The projections to cortical and subcortical brain areas are thought to have distinct roles: projections to cortical areas are thought to extract visual features from stimuli and aid in visual perception, while projections to subcortical areas are thought to modulate innate or simple behaviors. We hypothesize that cortical projections will play a critical role in mice performing a visual discrimination task because of their presumed roles in visual perception.

初级视觉皮层在视觉感知中起着至关重要的作用。这种关键作用被认为部分是由于它在视觉处理层次结构中的位置。它是大脑新皮层中第一个接收视觉输入的区域，并将这些信息分发到18个以上的大脑区域。然而，对于哪些大脑区域参与视觉感知，以及来自初级视觉皮层的哪些投射参与，我们知之甚少，这限制了我们对初级视觉皮层促进视觉感知的机制的理解。在这里，我们建议评估哪些皮层和皮层下区域参与视觉知觉辨别。此外，我们将评估信息是否通过初级视觉皮层的直接投射流向这些大脑区域。在我们之前的工作中，我们为老鼠开发了一个视觉识别任务。我们发现初级视觉皮层的损伤，或者说是光遗传沉默，会导致小鼠的表现准确性显著下降。重要的是，小鼠仍然会做出选择，它们的运动功能完好无损，这表明V1仅具有感知作用。大脑皮层和皮层下区域的投影被认为具有不同的作用：皮层区域的投影被认为是从刺激中提取视觉特征并帮助视觉感知，而皮层下区域的投影被认为调节先天或简单的行为。我们假设皮质投射将在小鼠执行视觉辨别任务中发挥关键作用，因为它们在视觉感知中起着假定的作用。