Abstract
During navigation, the visual responses of neurons in mouse primary visual cortex (V1) are modulated by the animal's spatial position. Here we show that this spatial modulation is similarly present across multiple higher visual areas but negligible in the main thalamic pathway into V1. Similar to hippocampus, spatial modulation in visual cortex strengthens with experience and with active behavior. Active navigation in a familiar environment, therefore, enhances the spatial modulation of visual signals starting in the cortex.
Highlights
Similar results were obtained during stationary replay (Figure 4c,d): baseline activity decreased markedly (Erisken et al, 2014) (p=10À65 pairedsample right-tailed t-test, Figure 4—figure supplement 1b), but the median spatial modulation index (SMI) remained negligible at 0.03 ± 0.04 and not different from the 0.07 ± 0.04 measured in virtual reality (VR) (n = 18 sessions, p=0.053, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Figure 4d)
Neuroscience stationary replay (Figure 4k,l), where the median SMI decreased ~68%, from 0.34 ± 0.15 in VR to 0.11 ± 0.11 (n = 33 sessions, p=10À6, right-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test, Figure 4k,l). This effect was accompanied by decreased firing in some areas, notably AM (p=0.03) and PM (p=10À9, pairedsample right-tailed t-test, Figure 4—figure supplement 1b). These results indicate that upon experience active navigation modulates the amplitude of visual responses along the visual pathway and does so primarily in the cortex
This spatial modulation of V1 visual responses strengthened across the first days of experience, perhaps more slowly than the development of navigational signals in hippocampus (Frank et al, 2004; Karlsson and Frank, 2008) but similar to retrosplenial cortex (Mao et al, 2018)
Summary
There is increasing evidence that the activity of the mouse primary visual cortex (V1) is influenced by navigational signals (Fiser et al, 2016; Flossmann and Rochefort, 2021; Fournier et al, 2020; Haggerty and Ji, 2015; Ji and Wilson, 2007; Pakan et al, 2018; Saleem et al, 2018). They might be stronger in parietal areas such as A and AM (Hovde et al, 2018), because many neurons in parietal cortex are associated with spatial coding (Krumin et al, 2018; McNaughton et al, 1994; Nitz, 2006; Save and Poucet, 2009; Whitlock et al, 2012; Wilber et al, 2014) It is not known if the spatial modulation of visual responses varies with experience in the environment or active navigation. If spatial modulation signals reach visual cortex from the navigational system, they should grow with active navigation and with experience of the environment
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