Mouse visual cortex contains a region of enhanced spatial resolution
Enny H. van Beest, Sreedeep Mukherjee, Lisa Kirchberger, Ulf H. Schnabel, Chris van der Togt, Rob R. M. Teeuwen, Areg Barsegyan, Arne F. Meyer, Jasper Poort, Pieter R. Roelfsema, Matthew W. Self
Abstract
The representation of space in mouse visual cortex was thought to be relatively uniform. Here we reveal, using population receptive-field (pRF) mapping techniques, that mouse visual cortex contains a region in which pRFs are considerably smaller. This region, the "focea," represents a location in space in front of, and slightly above, the mouse. Using two-photon imaging we show that the smaller pRFs are due to lower scatter of receptive-fields at the focea and an over-representation of binocular regions of space. We show that receptive-fields of single-neurons in areas LM and AL are smaller at the focea and that mice have improved visual resolution in this region of space. Furthermore, freely moving mice make compensatory eye-movements to hold this region in front of them. Our results indicate that mice have spatial biases in their visual processing, a finding that has important implications for the use of the mouse model of vision.