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Adrenergic Modulation of Visually-Guided Behavior.

Mario Treviño1, Ricardo Medina-Coss Y León1, Elí Lezama1

  • 1Laboratorio de Plasticidad Cortical y Aprendizaje Perceptual, Instituto de Neurociencias, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, México.

Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience
|April 6, 2019
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Norepinephrine (NE) activation of adrenergic receptors (ARs) in the visual cortex impairs visual discrimination and adaptive behavior. This effect, observed in awake mice, suggests ARs control visual perception via divisive gain.

Keywords:
adrenergic receptorsdivisive gain modulationneuromodulationnorepinephrinesignal-to-noise ratiovisual acuityvisual contrast discrimination

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Visual System
  • Pharmacology

Background:

  • Norepinephrine (NE) application in the visual cortex reduces neuronal activity.
  • Adrenergic receptors (ARs) are implicated in regulating neural signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
  • The behavioral impact of cortical NE on visual perception remains largely uncharacterized, especially in awake animals.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the influence of micro-infused AR agonists/antagonists in the mouse primary visual cortex (V1) on visually-guided behavior.
  • To determine how cortical AR activation affects visual discrimination across varying stimulus contrasts and spatial frequencies.
  • To elucidate the role of ARs in adaptive visual behavior and response gain control.

Main Methods:

  • Micro-infusion of adrenergic receptor (AR) agonists and antagonists into the primary visual cortex (V1) of mice.
  • Behavioral testing of visually-guided discrimination tasks at different stimulus contrasts and spatial frequencies.
  • Analysis of visual discrimination performance, escape latencies, and choice variance.

Main Results:

  • Activation of α1- and β-ARs in V1 significantly reduced visual discrimination performance, particularly at high contrasts and low spatial frequencies.
  • The observed behavioral deficits were reversible upon AR modulation.
  • Pharmacological AR activation led to increased escape latencies and elevated choice variance correlated with stimulus contrast.

Conclusions:

  • Cortical adrenergic receptors play a critical role in regulating visual perception and adaptive behavior.
  • Pharmacological activation of cortical ARs exerts a divisive gain control on visual responses, impacting behavioral performance.
  • These findings highlight the importance of NE modulation in visual processing and behavior, extending observations from anesthetized to awake states.