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A flexible Python-based touchscreen chamber for operant conditioning reveals improved visual perception of cardinal
Christopher Wiesbrock1,2, Simon Musall1,3, Björn M Kampa1,2,4
1Systems Neurophysiology, Institute for Zoology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
|October 27, 2022
Summary
Mice show similar orientation discrimination for cardinal and oblique visual stimuli after training. A novel touchscreen chamber facilitated this research, revealing that learning can enhance perception of oblique orientations.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Vision Science
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Natural scenes contain more vertical and horizontal edges, leading to better orientation discrimination in many mammals for these cardinal directions.
- While neural tuning to cardinal orientations exists in mouse visual cortex, perceptual dominance for these orientations remains unconfirmed.
- Investigating visual perception in mice is crucial for understanding sensory processing and adaptation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To design and validate a novel touchscreen chamber for assessing natural scene perception and orientation discrimination in mice.
- To determine if mice exhibit perceptual dominance for cardinal over oblique visual orientations.
- To explore the impact of training on orientation discrimination, particularly for oblique stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Development of a custom-built, open-source touchscreen chamber for behavioral experiments.
- Application of iterative training paradigms to determine orientation discrimination thresholds for cardinal and oblique stimuli in separate mouse cohorts.
- Implementation of a parallel training regime where mice discriminated both cardinal and oblique gratings simultaneously.
Main Results:
- Initial training showed similar expert discrimination performance for cardinal and oblique orientations, but with significant inter-individual variability.
- Parallel training revealed superior performance for cardinal orientations early in training.
- Prolonged parallel training led to comparable performance for both cardinal and oblique orientations, indicating learning-induced improvements for obliques.
Conclusions:
- The custom-built touchscreen chamber is a versatile tool for studying visual perception in rodents.
- Learning significantly enhances the perception of oblique visual stimuli in mice.
- The open-source nature of the chamber promotes reproducible and collaborative research in visual and multimodal neuroscience.
