Continuous flash suppression responses in mouse visual cortex: Stimulus laterality and anesthesia effects

We investigated whether binocularly conflicting stimuli may induce binocular response suppression in the mouse visual cortex. We presented stimuli adapted from the paradigm of continuous flash suppression to awake and anesthetized mice and examined neuronal responses in visual areas V1 and LM. Neuronal responses to monocular gratings on one eye could be modulated by presenting a conflicting flashing Mondrian stimulus to the other eye. The direction of this modulation depended on the laterality of the preferred grating. Responses of cells with a preference for ipsilateral gratings were strongly suppressed. Similar modulations also occurred under anesthesia, but response recovery after intermittent binocular conflict only occurred in awake mice. Responses to Mondrians were similarly modulated as those to gratings, which suggests that mouse binocular conflict processing exhibits a distinctive dependency on stimulus laterality. A canonical binocular rivalry model could be fitted to our data but failed to exhibit oscillatory activity under binocular conflict.