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Monocular Visual Deprivation and Ocular Dominance Plasticity Measurement in the Mouse Primary Visual Cortex

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Published on: February 8, 2020

Backward masking in mice requires visual cortex.

Samuel D Gale¹, Chelsea Strawder¹, Corbett Bennett¹

¹MindScope Program, Allen Institute, Seattle, WA, USA.

Nature Neuroscience

|November 13, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Visual masking reveals perception timescales. Suppressing later visual cortex activity improves performance, suggesting initial visual cortex spikes are crucial but later activity hinders perception.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Perception Science
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

Visual masking is a psychophysical tool to probe the temporal dynamics of visual perception.
The neural circuit mechanisms underlying visual masking, particularly backward masking, remain poorly understood.
Understanding these mechanisms is key to deciphering how the brain processes visual information over time.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the circuit mechanisms of visual masking using a backward masking task in mice and humans.
To compare behavioral and neural responses to masking in both species.
To elucidate the role of early visual cortex (V1) activity in masking effects.

Main Methods:

Developed a backward masking task where stimulus location was masked in mice and humans.
Utilized optogenetics to silence visual cortex (V1) in mice.
Recorded neural activity in V1 and developed a dual accumulator model to analyze behavior.

Main Results:

Both humans and mice exhibited reduced performance under visual masking, with humans reporting decreased visibility.
Optogenetic silencing of V1 in mice mimicked masking effects on performance over a similar timecourse.
V1 activity correlated with masked behavior over longer, but not shorter, time windows, and suppressing mask-evoked V1 activity restored performance.

Conclusions:

Mice and humans exhibit similar susceptibility to visual masking, indicating conserved perceptual mechanisms.
Early V1 activity is critical for correct responses, while later V1 activity can impair performance.
Visual masking effects and the confounding of target and mask information originate downstream of V1.