Endogenous and exogenous control of visuospatial selective attention in freely behaving mice

Wen-Kai You,Shreesh P Mysore

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-15909-2

Abstract

Visuospatial selective attention has been investigated primarily in head-fixed animals and almost exclusively in primates. Here, we develop two human-inspired, discrimination-based behavioral paradigms for studying selective visuospatial attention in freely behaving mice. In the ‘spatial probability’ task, we find enhanced accuracy, sensitivity, and rate of evidence accumulation at the location with higher probability of target occurrence, and opposite effects at the lower probability location. Together with video-based 3D head-tracking, these results demonstrate endogenous expectation-driven shifts of spatial attention. In the ‘flanker’ task, we find that a second stimulus presented with the target, but with conflicting information, causes switch-like decrements in accuracy and sensitivity as a function of its contrast, and slower evidence accumulation, demonstrating exogenous capture of spatial attention. The ability to study primate-like selective attention rigorously in unrestrained mice opens a rich avenue for research into neural circuit mechanisms underlying this critical executive function in a naturalistic setting.

Highlights

Visuospatial selective attention has been investigated primarily in head-fixed animals and almost exclusively in primates
A key aspect of the design of our tasks for spatial attention involved the decoupling of the spatial locus of the target of attention from that of the behavioral report
We found that when the target was at the upper location, the drift rate was higher in 90u-10 blocks relative to 50–50 blocks (Fig. 2b, green data, median change = +0.06 a.u., p = 0.035, signedrank and Holm–Bonferroni test (HB test)), indicating a higher rate of evidence accumulation

Summary

Introduction

Visuospatial selective attention has been investigated primarily in head-fixed animals and almost exclusively in primates. Selective (visuospatial) attention has been studied almost exclusively in restrained preparations In response to these needs, we present, for the first time, two human-inspired behavioral tasks for the study of endogenous as well as exogenous control of visuospatial selective attention in freely behaving mice. Our study adds support to the recent report of behavioral signatures of selective attention in head-fixed mice[6], and extends it, by demonstrating them in unrestrained mice In doing so, it accomplishes three critical goals: (a) the demonstration of primate-like (visuospatial) selective attention, (b) in freely behaving animals, and (c) in a species that facilitates the use of diverse genetically based tools for neural interrogation (Supplementary Fig. 1R)

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