Spatiotemporal tuning in mouse primary visual cortex

The neural correlates of visual motion perception have historically been studied in non-human primates. However, the mouse has recently gained popularity as a model for studying vision primarily driven by the hope that the genetic tools available in this species may contribute to our understanding of visual processing in the cortex. A recent calcium-imaging study on the spatiotemporal tuning of mouse striate and extrastriate cortex revealed that neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) were almost never speed tuned, whereas previous electrophysiological studies in macaques noted around one quarter of V1 neurons appeared to be selective for a particular stimulus speed. We were interested in whether this discrepancy was due to methodological or species differences, so we measured the spatiotemporal tuning of mouse V1 neurons using standard electrophysiological techniques. Using comparable analyses to previous studies of speed tuning, our data showed that speed tuning is rare in mouse V1, which corroborates earlier studies in mouse and points to a species difference in motion processing in early cortex between macaques and other mammals.