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Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus

Detection of salient objects in the visual scene is a vital aspect of an animal’s interactions with its environment. Here, we show that neurons in the mouse superior colliculus (SC) encode visual saliency by detecting motion contrast between stimulus center and surround. Excitatory neurons in the mo...

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Autores principales: Barchini, Jad, Shi, Xuefeng, Chen, Hui, Cang, Jianhua
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050041/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29963987
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.35261
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author Barchini, Jad
Shi, Xuefeng
Chen, Hui
Cang, Jianhua
author_facet Barchini, Jad
Shi, Xuefeng
Chen, Hui
Cang, Jianhua
author_sort Barchini, Jad
collection PubMed
description Detection of salient objects in the visual scene is a vital aspect of an animal’s interactions with its environment. Here, we show that neurons in the mouse superior colliculus (SC) encode visual saliency by detecting motion contrast between stimulus center and surround. Excitatory neurons in the most superficial lamina of the SC are contextually modulated, monotonically increasing their response from suppression by the same-direction surround to maximal potentiation by an oppositely-moving surround. The degree of this potentiation declines with depth in the SC. Inhibitory neurons are suppressed by any surround at all depths. These response modulations in both neuronal populations are much more prominent to direction contrast than to phase, temporal frequency, or static orientation contrast, suggesting feature-specific saliency encoding in the mouse SC. Together, our findings provide evidence supporting locally generated feature representations in the SC, and lay the foundations towards a mechanistic and evolutionary understanding of their emergence.
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spelling pubmed-60500412018-07-18 Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus Barchini, Jad Shi, Xuefeng Chen, Hui Cang, Jianhua eLife Neuroscience Detection of salient objects in the visual scene is a vital aspect of an animal’s interactions with its environment. Here, we show that neurons in the mouse superior colliculus (SC) encode visual saliency by detecting motion contrast between stimulus center and surround. Excitatory neurons in the most superficial lamina of the SC are contextually modulated, monotonically increasing their response from suppression by the same-direction surround to maximal potentiation by an oppositely-moving surround. The degree of this potentiation declines with depth in the SC. Inhibitory neurons are suppressed by any surround at all depths. These response modulations in both neuronal populations are much more prominent to direction contrast than to phase, temporal frequency, or static orientation contrast, suggesting feature-specific saliency encoding in the mouse SC. Together, our findings provide evidence supporting locally generated feature representations in the SC, and lay the foundations towards a mechanistic and evolutionary understanding of their emergence. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2018-07-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6050041/ /pubmed/29963987 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.35261 Text en © 2018, Barchini et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Barchini, Jad
Shi, Xuefeng
Chen, Hui
Cang, Jianhua
Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
title Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
title_full Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
title_fullStr Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
title_full_unstemmed Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
title_short Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
title_sort bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050041/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29963987
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.35261
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