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

初级视皮层在视觉感知中起着关键作用。这一关键作用被认为部分是由于其在视觉处理层次结构中的位置。它是新皮层中第一个接收视觉输入的大脑区域，并将这些信息分配给18个以上的大脑区域。然而，很少有人知道哪些其他大脑区域参与视觉感知，以及初级视觉皮层的哪些投射参与其中，这限制了我们对初级视觉皮层有助于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感知的歧视。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。在我们以前的工作中，我们开发了一个小鼠的视觉辨别任务。我们发现，初级视觉皮层的损伤，或者光遗传学沉默，导致小鼠的性能准确性显着下降。重要的是，小鼠仍然做出选择，它们的运动功能完好无损，这表明V1只起感知作用。向皮质和皮质下脑区的投射被认为具有不同的作用：向皮质区的投射被认为从刺激中提取视觉特征并帮助视觉感知，而向皮质下区的投射被认为调节先天或简单的行为。我们假设，皮质的预测将发挥关键作用，在小鼠执行视觉辨别任务，因为他们假定的作用，在视觉感知。

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.