Active sensing during a visual perceptual decision-making task

From the Welsh tidy mouse to the New York City pizza rat, movement reveals rodent intelligence. Rodents use self-generated movements to modulate sensory input in touch and audition, but whether this extends to vision is less established. Here, we show that some head-fixed mice developed an active sensing strategy in a visual perceptual decision-making task. Akin to humans shaking a computer mouse to find the cursor on a screen, some mice wiggled a wheel that controlled the movement of a visual stimulus during low-contrast trials. When mice wiggled the wheel, the low-contrast accuracy increased. Moreover, these wiggles moved the visual stimulus at a temporal frequency (11.5 ± 2.5 Hz) that maximizes contrast sensitivity in rodents. Perturbing the task contingency and visuo-motor coupling reduced wiggle behavior. The performance benefit of wiggle behavior persisted after controlling for arousal state. Together, these results provide evidence for active sensing in head-fixed mouse vision.