Mouse Higher Visual Areas Provide Both Distributed and Specialized Contributions to Visually Guided Behaviors

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception
• Cortical Processing

Background:

• Cortical parallel processing streams segregate sensory information.
• Some visual features are distributed across these streams, raising questions about their perceptual contribution.
• The roles of specific visual areas in processing distributed features remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the necessity of the primary visual cortex (V1) and higher visual areas (LM, AL, PM) for perceiving orientation and contrast.
• To investigate how distributed visual representations contribute to perception.
• To elucidate specialized perceptual roles of higher visual areas.

Main Methods:

• Selective suppression of activity in V1, LM, AL, and PM.
• Assessing performance on orientation discrimination and contrast detection tasks.
• Analyzing effects on sensitivity and false alarm rates.

Main Results:

• Suppressing V1, LM, or AL impaired both orientation discrimination and contrast detection.
• Suppressing PM selectively increased false alarm rates in contrast detection but not orientation discrimination.
• The effects of PM suppression were not retinotopically specific, suggesting impacts on integration or decision-making.

Conclusions:

• V1, LM, and AL are essential for basic visual feature perception.
• PM plays a specialized role in contrast detection, potentially influencing sensory integration or decision processes.
• Distributed visual representations can support specialized perceptual functions in higher visual areas.