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Veale R, Takahashi M. Pathways for Naturalistic Looking Behavior in Primate II. Superior Colliculus Integrates Parallel Top-down and Bottom-up Inputs. Neuroscience 2024; 545:86-110. [PMID: 38484836 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.03.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/01/2023] [Revised: 02/15/2024] [Accepted: 03/01/2024] [Indexed: 03/24/2024]
Abstract
Volitional signals for gaze control are provided by multiple parallel pathways converging on the midbrain superior colliculus (SC), whose deeper layers output to the brainstem gaze circuits. In the first of two papers (Takahashi and Veale, 2023), we described the properties of gaze behavior of several species under both laboratory and natural conditions, as well as the current understanding of the brainstem and spinal cord circuits implementing gaze control in primate. In this paper, we review the parallel pathways by which sensory and task information reaches SC and how these sensory and task signals interact within SC's multilayered structure. This includes both bottom-up (world statistics) signals mediated by sensory cortex, association cortex, and subcortical structures, as well as top-down (goal and task) influences which arrive via either direct excitatory pathways from cerebral cortex, or via indirect basal ganglia relays resulting in inhibition or dis-inhibition as appropriate for alternative behaviors. Models of attention such as saliency maps serve as convenient frameworks to organize our understanding of both the separate computations of each neural pathway, as well as the interaction between the multiple parallel pathways influencing gaze. While the spatial interactions between gaze's neural pathways are relatively well understood, the temporal interactions between and within pathways will be an important area of future study, requiring both improved technical methods for measurement and improvement of our understanding of how temporal dynamics results in the observed spatiotemporal allocation of gaze.
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Affiliation(s)
- Richard Veale
- Department of Neurobiology, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan
| | - Mayu Takahashi
- Department of Systems Neurophysiology, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Japan.
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2
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Rajendran Nair DS, Camarillo JCM, Lu G, Thomas BB. Measuring spatial visual loss in rats by retinotopic mapping of the superior colliculus using a novel multi-electrode array technique. J Neurosci Methods 2024; 405:110095. [PMID: 38403001 DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2024.110095] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2023] [Revised: 02/06/2024] [Accepted: 02/22/2024] [Indexed: 02/27/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The retinotopic map property of the superior colliculus (SC) is a reliable indicator of visual functional changes in rodents. Electrophysiological mapping of the SC using a single electrode has been employed for measuring visual function in rat and mouse disease models. Single electrode mapping is highly laborious requiring long-term exposure to the SC surface and prolonged anesthetic conditions that can adversely affect the mapping data. NEW METHOD To avoid the above-mentioned issues, we fabricated a fifty-six (56) electrode multi-electrode array (MEA) for rapid and reliable visual functional mapping of the SC. Since SC is a dome-shaped structure, the array was made of electrodes with dissimilar tip lengths to enable simultaneous and uniform penetration of the SC. RESULTS SC mapping using the new MEA was conducted in retinal degenerate (RD) Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rats and rats with focal retinal damage induced by green diode laser. For SC mapping, the MEA was advanced into the SC surface and the visual activities were recorded during full-filed light stimulation of the eye. Based on the morphological examination, the MEA electrodes covered most of the exposed SC area and penetrated the SC surface at a relatively uniform depth. MEA mapping in RCS rats (n=9) demonstrated progressive development of a scotoma in the SC that corresponded to the degree of photoreceptor loss. MEA mapping in the laser damaged rats demonstrated the presence of a scotoma in the SC area that corresponded to the location of retinal laser injury. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS AND CONCLUSIONS The use of MEA for SC mapping is advantageous over single electrode recording by enabling faster recordings and reducing anesthesia time. This study establishes the feasibility of the MEA technique for rapid and efficient SC mapping, particularly advantageous for evaluating therapeutic effects in retinal degenerate rat disease models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Deepthi S Rajendran Nair
- Roski Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, United States
| | - Juan Carlos-Martinez Camarillo
- Roski Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, United States; USC Ginsburg Institute for Biomedical Therapeutics, University of Southern California, United States
| | - Gengxi Lu
- Roski Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, United States
| | - Biju B Thomas
- Roski Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, United States; USC Ginsburg Institute for Biomedical Therapeutics, University of Southern California, United States.
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3
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Rudenko A, Kim IJ. Supermultipotency and unpredictability in the developing superior colliculus. Trends Neurosci 2024; 47:239-240. [PMID: 38514350 PMCID: PMC11047761 DOI: 10.1016/j.tins.2024.03.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2024] [Accepted: 03/10/2024] [Indexed: 03/23/2024]
Abstract
A recent study by Cheung, Pauler, Koppensteiner et al. combining lineage tracing with single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has revealed unexpected features of the developing superior colliculus (SC). Extremely multipotent individual progenitors generate all types of SC neurons and glial cells that were found to localize in a non-predetermined pattern, demonstrating a remarkable degree of unpredictability in SC development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrii Rudenko
- Department of Biology, Graduate Programs in Biology and Biochemistry, City College and City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
| | - In-Jung Kim
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
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4
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Wang L, Xin H, Buren Q, Zhang Y, Han Y, Ouyang B, Sun Z, Bao Y, Dong C. Specific rules for time and space of multisensory plasticity in the superior colliculus. Brain Res 2024; 1828:148774. [PMID: 38244758 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2024.148774] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2023] [Revised: 12/28/2023] [Accepted: 01/15/2024] [Indexed: 01/22/2024]
Abstract
Cat superior colliculus (SC) neurons commonly combine information from different senses, which facilitates event detection and localization. Integration in SC multisensory neurons depends on the spatial and temporal relationships between cross-modal cues. Here, we revealed the parallel process of short-term plasticity in the temporal/spatial integration process during adulthood that adapts multisensory integration to reliable changes in environmental conditions. Short-term experience alters the temporal preferences of SC multisensory neurons, and this short-term plasticity in the temporal/spatial integration process is limited to changes in cross-modal timing (a factor commonly induced by events at different distances from the receiver). However, this plasticity was not evident in response to changes in the cross-modal spatial configuration.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linghong Wang
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Hongmei Xin
- School of Humanities Education, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Qiqige Buren
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Yan Zhang
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Yaxin Han
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Biao Ouyang
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Zhe Sun
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China
| | - Yulong Bao
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China.
| | - Chao Dong
- School of Basic Medicine, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot 010110, China.
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5
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Northmore DPM. Visual shape discrimination in goldfish, modelled with the neural circuitry of optic tectum and torus longitudinalis. Vision Res 2024; 217:108374. [PMID: 38452566 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2024.108374] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2023] [Revised: 02/08/2024] [Accepted: 02/20/2024] [Indexed: 03/09/2024]
Abstract
There is no satisfactory neurally-based theory as to how vertebrates that lack a neocortex discriminate even simple geometric shapes. In fishes, an intact optic tectum is necessary for such discriminations, but physiological studies of it have found nothing like the hierarchically arranged feature detecting neurons of mammalian visual cortex. Here, a neural model attempts a solution by basing shape discrimination upon the responses of only those elementary detectors (e.g. of size) that are within a focus of attention, formed by a winner-take-all arrangement of retinotopically mapped units representing tectal pyramidal cells. While this relatively primitive mechanism could recognize an object irrespective of position in space, it fails to distinguish patterns that differ only in their features' spatial relationships. The model's solution - imitating goldfish that naturally attend to the top of shapes - is to shift attention to the edges of a shape by spatially offsetting inputs to the pyramidal neurons, effected by the torus longitudinalis and its prolific synapses on pyramidal dendrites. The model's shape discrimination was compared to an extensive behavioral study using shapes with points and projections. In one test series fish were sensitive to the relative number of points on the tops of shapes. In another, fish were trained to discriminate points on the sides. By using different offset connections and only one elementary feature detector for small dark spots, the model successfully emulated the two sets of goldfish data, as judged by significant correlations between model response and fish discrimination.
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Affiliation(s)
- D P M Northmore
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, United States of America.
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6
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de Malmazet D, Kühn NK, Li C, Farrow K. Retinal origin of orientation but not direction selective maps in the superior colliculus. Curr Biol 2024; 34:1222-1233.e7. [PMID: 38417446 PMCID: PMC10980837 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2023] [Revised: 12/19/2023] [Accepted: 02/01/2024] [Indexed: 03/01/2024]
Abstract
Neurons in the mouse superior colliculus ("colliculus") are arranged in ordered spatial maps. While orientation-selective (OS) neurons form a concentric map aligned to the center of vision, direction-selective (DS) neurons are arranged in patches with changing preferences across the visual field. It remains unclear whether these maps are a consequence of feedforward input from the retina or local computations in the colliculus. To determine whether these maps originate in the retina, we mapped the local and global distribution of OS and DS retinal ganglion cell axon boutons using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging. We found that OS boutons formed patches that matched the distribution of OS neurons within the colliculus. DS boutons displayed fewer regional specializations, better reflecting the organization of DS neurons in the retina. Both eyes convey similar orientation but different DS inputs to the colliculus, as shown in recordings from retinal explants. These data demonstrate that orientation and direction maps within the colliculus are independent, where orientation maps are likely inherited from the retina, but direction maps require additional computations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel de Malmazet
- Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders, Leuven 3001, Belgium; KU Leuven, Department of Biology & Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven 3000, Belgium; MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge CB2 0QH, UK
| | - Norma K Kühn
- Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders, Leuven 3001, Belgium; KU Leuven, Department of Biology & Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven 3000, Belgium; VIB, Leuven 3001, Belgium
| | - Chen Li
- Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders, Leuven 3001, Belgium; KU Leuven, Department of Biology & Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven 3000, Belgium
| | - Karl Farrow
- Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders, Leuven 3001, Belgium; KU Leuven, Department of Biology & Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven 3000, Belgium; VIB, Leuven 3001, Belgium; imec, Leuven 3001, Belgium.
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7
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Krizan J, Song X, Fitzpatrick MJ, Shen N, Soto F, Kerschensteiner D. Predation without direction selectivity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2024; 121:e2317218121. [PMID: 38483997 PMCID: PMC10962952 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2317218121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/04/2023] [Accepted: 01/27/2024] [Indexed: 03/19/2024] Open
Abstract
Across the animal kingdom, visual predation relies on motion-sensing neurons in the superior colliculus (SC) and its orthologs. These neurons exhibit complex stimulus preferences, including direction selectivity, which is thought to be critical for tracking the unpredictable escape routes of prey. The source of direction selectivity in the SC is contested, and its contributions to predation have not been tested experimentally. Here, we use type-specific cell removal to show that narrow-field (NF) neurons in the mouse SC guide predation. In vivo recordings demonstrate that direction-selective responses of NF cells are independent of recently reported stimulus-edge effects. Monosynaptic retrograde tracing reveals that NF cells receive synaptic input from direction-selective ganglion cells. When we eliminate direction selectivity in the retina of adult mice, direction-selective responses in the SC, including in NF cells, are lost. However, eliminating retinal direction selectivity does not affect the hunting success or strategies of mice, even when direction selectivity is removed after mice have learned to hunt, and despite abolishing the gaze-stabilizing optokinetic reflex. Thus, our results identify the retinal source of direction selectivity in the SC. They show that NF cells in the SC guide predation, an essential spatial orienting task, independent of their direction selectivity, revealing behavioral multiplexing of complex neural feature preferences and highlighting the importance of feature-selective manipulations for neuroethology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jenna Krizan
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
- Graduate program in Neuroscience, Roy and Diana Vagelos Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
| | - Xiayingfang Song
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
- Graduate program in Biomedical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63130
| | - Michael J. Fitzpatrick
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
- Graduate program in Neuroscience, Roy and Diana Vagelos Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
| | - Ning Shen
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
| | - Florentina Soto
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
| | - Daniel Kerschensteiner
- Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
- Department of Neuroscience, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO63110
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63130
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8
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Ritter A, Habusha S, Givon L, Edut S, Klavir O. Prefrontal control of superior colliculus modulates innate escape behavior following adversity. Nat Commun 2024; 15:2158. [PMID: 38461293 PMCID: PMC10925020 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46460-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2023] [Accepted: 02/28/2024] [Indexed: 03/11/2024] Open
Abstract
Innate defensive responses, though primarily instinctive, must also be highly adaptive to changes in risk assessment. However, adaptive changes can become maladaptive, following severe stress, as seen in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a series of experiments, we observed long-term changes in innate escape behavior of male mice towards a previously non-threatening stimulus following an adverse shock experience manifested as a shift in the threshold of threat response. By recording neural activity in the superior colliculus (SC) while phototagging specific responses to afferents, we established the crucial influence of input arriving at the SC from the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), both directly and indirectly, on escape-related activity after adverse shock experience. Inactivating these specific projections during the shock effectively abolished the observed changes. Conversely, optogenetically activating them during encounters controlled escape responses. This establishes the necessity and sufficiency of those specific mPFC inputs into the SC for adverse experience related changes in innate escape behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ami Ritter
- School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBRC), University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Shlomi Habusha
- School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBRC), University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Lior Givon
- School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBRC), University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Shahaf Edut
- School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBRC), University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Oded Klavir
- School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
- The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center (IBBRC), University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
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9
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Yuan M, Jin S, Tan G, Song S, Liu Y, Wang H, Shen Y. A Non-canonical Excitatory PV RGC-PV SC Visual Pathway for Mediating the Looming-evoked Innate Defensive Response. Neurosci Bull 2024; 40:310-324. [PMID: 37302108 PMCID: PMC10912393 DOI: 10.1007/s12264-023-01076-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2023] [Accepted: 05/04/2023] [Indexed: 06/13/2023] Open
Abstract
Parvalbumin-positive retinal ganglion cells (PV+ RGCs) are an essential subset of RGCs found in various species. However, their role in transmitting visual information remains unclear. Here, we characterized PV+ RGCs in the retina and explored the functions of the PV+ RGC-mediated visual pathway. By applying multiple viral tracing strategies, we investigated the downstream of PV+ RGCs across the whole brain. Interestingly, we found that the PV+ RGCs provided direct monosynaptic input to PV+ excitatory neurons in the superficial layers of the superior colliculus (SC). Ablation or suppression of SC-projecting PV+ RGCs abolished or severely impaired the flight response to looming visual stimuli in mice without affecting visual acuity. Furthermore, using transcriptome expression profiling of individual cells and immunofluorescence colocalization for RGCs, we found that PV+ RGCs are predominant glutamatergic neurons. Thus, our findings indicate the critical role of PV+ RGCs in an innate defensive response and suggest a non-canonical subcortical visual pathway from excitatory PV+ RGCs to PV+ SC neurons that regulates looming visual stimuli. These results provide a potential target for intervening and treating diseases related to this circuit, such as schizophrenia and autism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Man Yuan
- Eye Center, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430060, China
| | - Sen Jin
- The Brain Cognition and Brain Disease Institute, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Viral Vectors for Biomedicine, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institute of Brain Science-Shenzhen Fundamental Research Institutions, National Medical Products Administration Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Viral Vector Technology in Cell and Gene Therapy Medicinal Products, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Quality Control Technology for Virus-Based Therapeutics, Guangdong Provincial Medical Products Administration, Shenzhen, 518055, China
- State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems, Wuhan Center for Magnetic Resonance, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, CAS, Wuhan, 430071, China
| | - Gao Tan
- Eye Center, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430060, China
| | - Siyuan Song
- Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, 77030, USA
| | - Yizong Liu
- Eye Center, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430060, China
| | - Huadong Wang
- The Brain Cognition and Brain Disease Institute, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Viral Vectors for Biomedicine, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institute of Brain Science-Shenzhen Fundamental Research Institutions, National Medical Products Administration Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Viral Vector Technology in Cell and Gene Therapy Medicinal Products, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Quality Control Technology for Virus-Based Therapeutics, Guangdong Provincial Medical Products Administration, Shenzhen, 518055, China
- State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems, Wuhan Center for Magnetic Resonance, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, CAS, Wuhan, 430071, China
| | - Yin Shen
- Eye Center, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430060, China.
- Frontier Science Center of Immunology and Metabolism, Medical Research Institute, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, China.
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10
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Conroy C, Nanjappa R, McPeek RM. Inhibitory tagging both speeds and strengthens saccade target selection in the superior colliculus during visual search. J Neurophysiol 2024; 131:548-555. [PMID: 38292000 DOI: 10.1152/jn.00355.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2023] [Revised: 01/22/2024] [Accepted: 01/26/2024] [Indexed: 02/01/2024] Open
Abstract
It has been suggested that, during difficult visual search tasks involving time pressure and multiple saccades, inhibitory tagging helps to facilitate efficient saccade target selection by reducing responses to objects in the scene once they have been searched and rejected. The superior colliculus (SC) is a midbrain structure involved in target selection, and recent findings suggest an influence of inhibitory tagging on SC activity. Precisely how, and by how much, inhibitory tagging influences target selection by SC neurons, however, is unclear. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to characterize and quantify the influence of inhibitory tagging on target selection in the SC. Rhesus monkeys performed a visual search task involving time pressure and multiple saccades. Early in the fixation period between saccades in the context of this task, a subset of SC neurons reliably discriminated the stimulus selected as the next saccade goal, consistent with a role in target selection. Discrimination occurred earlier and was more robust, however, when unselected stimuli in the search array had been previously fixated on the same trial. This indicates that inhibitory tagging both speeds and strengthens saccade target selection in the SC during multisaccade search. The results provide constraints on models of target selection based on SC activity.NEW & NOTEWORTHY An important aspect of efficient behavior during difficult, time-limited visual search tasks is the efficient selection of sequential saccade targets. Inhibitory tagging, i.e., a reduction of neural activity associated with previously fixated objects, may help to facilitate such efficient selection by modulating the selection process in the superior colliculus (SC). In this study, we characterized and quantified this modulation and found that, indeed, inhibitory tagging both speeds and strengthens target selection in the SC.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher Conroy
- Department of Biological and Vision Sciences, State University of New York College of Optometry, New York City, New York, United States
| | - Rakesh Nanjappa
- Department of Biological and Vision Sciences, State University of New York College of Optometry, New York City, New York, United States
- Department of Optometry, School of Medical & Allied Sciences, G.D. Goenka University, Gurugram, India
| | - Robert M McPeek
- Department of Biological and Vision Sciences, State University of New York College of Optometry, New York City, New York, United States
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11
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Gil R, Valente M, Shemesh N. Rat superior colliculus encodes the transition between static and dynamic vision modes. Nat Commun 2024; 15:849. [PMID: 38346973 PMCID: PMC10861507 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44934-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 01/09/2024] [Indexed: 02/15/2024] Open
Abstract
The visual continuity illusion involves a shift in visual perception from static to dynamic vision modes when the stimuli arrive at high temporal frequency, and is critical for recognizing objects moving in the environment. However, how this illusion is encoded across the visual pathway remains poorly understood, with disparate frequency thresholds at retinal, cortical, and behavioural levels suggesting the involvement of other brain areas. Here, we employ a multimodal approach encompassing behaviour, whole-brain functional MRI, and electrophysiological measurements, for investigating the encoding of the continuity illusion in rats. Behavioural experiments report a frequency threshold of 18±2 Hz. Functional MRI reveal that superior colliculus signals transition from positive to negative at the behaviourally-driven threshold, unlike thalamic and cortical areas. Electrophysiological recordings indicate that these transitions are underpinned by neural activation/suppression. Lesions in the primary visual cortex reveal this effect to be intrinsic to the superior colliculus (under a cortical gain effect). Our findings highlight the superior colliculus' crucial involvement in encoding temporal frequency shifts, especially the change from static to dynamic vision modes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rita Gil
- Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
| | - Mafalda Valente
- Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
| | - Noam Shemesh
- Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
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12
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Liao CC, Gabi M, Qi HX, Kaas JH. The postnatal development of retinal projections in strepsirrhine galagos (Otolemur garnettii). J Comp Neurol 2024; 532:e25565. [PMID: 38047381 PMCID: PMC10922899 DOI: 10.1002/cne.25565] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/13/2023] [Revised: 11/13/2023] [Accepted: 11/17/2023] [Indexed: 12/05/2023]
Abstract
Here, we describe the postnatal development of retinal projections in galagos. Galagos are of special interest as they represent the understudied strepsirrhine branch (galagos, pottos, lorises, and lemurs) of the primate radiations. The projections of both eyes were revealed in each galago by injecting red or green cholera toxin subunit B (CTB) tracers into different eyes of galagos ranging from postnatal day 5 to adult. In the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus, the magnocellular, parvocellular, and koniocellular layers were clearly labeled and identified by having inputs from the ipsilateral or contralateral eye at all ages. In the superficial layers of the superior colliculus, the terminations from the ipsilateral eye were just ventral to those from the contralateral eye at all ages. Other terminations at postnatal day 5 and later were in the pregeniculate nucleus, the accessory optic system, and the pretectum. As in other primates, a small retinal projection terminated in the posterior part of the pulvinar, which is known to project to the temporal visual cortex. This small projection from both eyes was most apparent on day 5 and absent in mature galagos. A similar reduction over postnatal maturation has been reported in marmosets, leading to the speculation that early retinal inputs to the pulvinar are responsible for the activation and early maturation of the middle temporal visual area, MT.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chia-Chi Liao
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Mariana Gabi
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Hui-Xin Qi
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Jon H Kaas
- Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
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13
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Matcham AC, Toma K, Tsai NY, Sze CJ, Lin PY, Stewart IF, Duan X. Cadherin-13 Maintains Retinotectal Synapses via Transneuronal Interactions. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e1310232023. [PMID: 38123991 PMCID: PMC10860569 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1310-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2023] [Revised: 12/03/2023] [Accepted: 12/05/2023] [Indexed: 12/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Maintaining precise synaptic contacts between neuronal partners is critical to ensure the proper functioning of the mammalian central nervous system (CNS). Diverse cell recognition molecules, such as classic cadherins (Cdhs), are part of the molecular machinery mediating synaptic choices during development and synaptic maintenance. Yet, the principles governing neuron-neuron wiring across diverse CNS neuron types remain largely unknown. The retinotectal synapses, connections from the retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) to the superior collicular (SC) neurons, offer an ideal experimental system to reveal molecular logic underlying synaptic choices and formation. This is due to the retina's unidirectional and laminar-restricted projections to the SC and the large databases of presynaptic RGC subtypes and postsynaptic SC neuronal types. Here, we focused on determining the role of Type II Cdhs in wiring the retinotectal synapses. We surveyed Cdhs expression patterns at neuronal resolution and revealed that Cdh13 is enriched in the wide-field neurons in the superficial SC (sSC). In either the Cdh13 null mutant or selective adult deletion within the wide-field neurons, there is a significant reduction of spine densities in the distal dendrites of these neurons in both sexes. Additionally, Cdh13 removal from presynaptic RGCs reduced dendritic spines in the postsynaptic wide-field neurons. Cdh13-expressing RGCs use differential mechanisms than αRGCs and On-Off Direction-Selective Ganglion Cells (ooDSGCs) to form specific retinotectal synapses. The results revealed a selective transneuronal interaction mediated by Cdh13 to maintain proper retinotectal synapses in vivo.
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Affiliation(s)
- Angela C Matcham
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
| | - Kenichi Toma
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
| | - Nicole Y Tsai
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
| | - Christina J Sze
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
| | - Pin-Yeh Lin
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
| | - Ilaria F Stewart
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
| | - Xin Duan
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California SanFrancisco, San Francisco 94143-2811, California
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14
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Cheung G, Pauler FM, Koppensteiner P, Krausgruber T, Streicher C, Schrammel M, Gutmann-Özgen N, Ivec AE, Bock C, Shigemoto R, Hippenmeyer S. Multipotent progenitors instruct ontogeny of the superior colliculus. Neuron 2024; 112:230-246.e11. [PMID: 38096816 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.11.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2023] [Revised: 10/06/2023] [Accepted: 11/10/2023] [Indexed: 01/21/2024]
Abstract
The superior colliculus (SC) in the mammalian midbrain is essential for multisensory integration and is composed of a rich diversity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons and glia. However, the developmental principles directing the generation of SC cell-type diversity are not understood. Here, we pursued systematic cell lineage tracing in silico and in vivo, preserving full spatial information, using genetic mosaic analysis with double markers (MADM)-based clonal analysis with single-cell sequencing (MADM-CloneSeq). The analysis of clonally related cell lineages revealed that radial glial progenitors (RGPs) in SC are exceptionally multipotent. Individual resident RGPs have the capacity to produce all excitatory and inhibitory SC neuron types, even at the stage of terminal division. While individual clonal units show no pre-defined cellular composition, the establishment of appropriate relative proportions of distinct neuronal types occurs in a PTEN-dependent manner. Collectively, our findings provide an inaugural framework at the single-RGP/-cell level of the mammalian SC ontogeny.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giselle Cheung
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Florian M Pauler
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Peter Koppensteiner
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Thomas Krausgruber
- CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine, Austrian Academy of Sciences; 1090 Vienna, Austria; Medical University of Vienna, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Center for Medical Data Science, 1090 Vienna, Austria
| | - Carmen Streicher
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Martin Schrammel
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Natalie Gutmann-Özgen
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Alexis E Ivec
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Christoph Bock
- CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine, Austrian Academy of Sciences; 1090 Vienna, Austria; Medical University of Vienna, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Center for Medical Data Science, 1090 Vienna, Austria
| | - Ryuichi Shigemoto
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
| | - Simon Hippenmeyer
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria.
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15
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Takahashi M, Sugiuchi Y, Shinoda Y. Brainstem Neural Circuits Triggering Vertical Saccades and Fixation. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e1657232023. [PMID: 37968118 PMCID: PMC10851683 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1657-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/28/2023] [Revised: 10/27/2023] [Accepted: 10/28/2023] [Indexed: 11/17/2023] Open
Abstract
Neurons in the nucleus raphe interpositus have tonic activity that suppresses saccadic burst neurons (BNs) during eye fixations, and that is inhibited before and during saccades in all directions (omnipause neurons, OPNs). We have previously demonstrated via intracellular recording and anatomical staining in anesthetized cats of both sexes that OPNs are inhibited by BNs in the medullary reticular formation (horizontal inhibitory BNs, IBNs). These horizontal IBNs receive monosynaptic input from the caudal horizontal saccade area of the superior colliculus (SC), and then produce monosynaptic inhibition in OPNs, providing a mechanism to trigger saccades. However, it is well known that the neural circuits driving horizontal components of saccades are independent from the circuits driving vertical components. Thus, our previous results are unable to explain how purely vertical saccades are triggered. Here, we again apply intracellular recording to show that a disynaptic vertical IBN circuit exists, analogous to the horizontal circuit. Specifically, we show that stimulation of the SC rostral vertical saccade area produces disynaptic inhibition in OPNs, which is not abolished by midline section between the horizontal IBNs. This excludes the possibility that horizontal IBNs could be responsible for the OPN inhibition during vertical saccades. We then show that vertical IBNs in the interstitial nucleus of Cajal, which receive monosynaptic input from rostral SC, are responsible for the disynaptic inhibition of OPNs. These results indicate that a similarly functioning SC-IBN-OPN circuit exists for both the horizontal and vertical oculomotor pathways. These two IBN-mediated circuits are capable of triggering saccades in any direction.Significance Statement Saccades shift gaze to objects of interest, moving their image to the central retina, where it is maintained for detailed examination (fixation). During fixation, high gain saccade burst neurons (BNs) are tonically inhibited by omnipause neurons (OPNs). Our previous study showed that medullary horizontal inhibitory BNs (IBNs) activated from the caudal superior colliculus (SC) inhibit tonically active OPNs in order to initiate horizontal saccades. The present study addresses the source of OPN inhibition for vertical saccades. We find that OPNs monosynaptically inhibit vertical IBNs in the interstitial nucleus of Cajal during fixation. Those same vertical IBNs are activated by the rostral SC, and inhibit OPN activity to initiate vertical saccades.
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Affiliation(s)
- M Takahashi
- Department of Systems Neurophysiology, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo 113-8519, Japan
| | - Y Sugiuchi
- Department of Systems Neurophysiology, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo 113-8519, Japan
| | - Y Shinoda
- Department of Systems Neurophysiology, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo 113-8519, Japan
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16
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Guo F, Zou J, Wang Y, Fang B, Zhou H, Wang D, He S, Zhang P. Human subcortical pathways automatically detect collision trajectory without attention and awareness. PLoS Biol 2024; 22:e3002375. [PMID: 38236815 PMCID: PMC10795999 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002375] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/03/2023] [Accepted: 12/14/2023] [Indexed: 01/22/2024] Open
Abstract
Detecting imminent collisions is essential for survival. Here, we used high-resolution fMRI at 7 Tesla to investigate the role of attention and consciousness for detecting collision trajectory in human subcortical pathways. Healthy participants can precisely discriminate collision from near-miss trajectory of an approaching object, with pupil size change reflecting collision sensitivity. Subcortical pathways from the superior colliculus (SC) to the ventromedial pulvinar (vmPul) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) exhibited collision-sensitive responses even when participants were not paying attention to the looming stimuli. For hemianopic patients with unilateral lesions of the geniculostriate pathway, the ipsilesional SC and VTA showed significant activation to collision stimuli in their scotoma. Furthermore, stronger SC responses predicted better behavioral performance in collision detection even in the absence of awareness. Therefore, human tectofugal pathways could automatically detect collision trajectories without the observers' attention to and awareness of looming stimuli, supporting "blindsight" detection of impending visual threats.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fanhua Guo
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Jinyou Zou
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Aier Institute of Optometry and Vision Science, Aier Eye Hospital Group, Changsha, China
| | - Ye Wang
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Boyan Fang
- Neurological Rehabilitation Center, Beijing Rehabilitation Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| | - Huanfen Zhou
- Division of Ophthalmology, The Third Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
| | - Dajiang Wang
- Division of Ophthalmology, The Third Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
| | - Sheng He
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, China
| | - Peng Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, China
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17
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Uribe-Arias A, Rozenblat R, Vinepinsky E, Marachlian E, Kulkarni A, Zada D, Privat M, Topsakalian D, Charpy S, Candat V, Nourin S, Appelbaum L, Sumbre G. Radial astrocyte synchronization modulates the visual system during behavioral-state transitions. Neuron 2023; 111:4040-4057.e6. [PMID: 37863038 PMCID: PMC10783638 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.09.022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2023] [Revised: 08/01/2023] [Accepted: 09/15/2023] [Indexed: 10/22/2023]
Abstract
Glial cells support the function of neurons. Recent evidence shows that astrocytes are also involved in brain computations. To explore whether and how their excitable nature affects brain computations and motor behaviors, we used two-photon Ca2+ imaging of zebrafish larvae expressing GCaMP in both neurons and radial astrocytes (RAs). We found that in the optic tectum, RAs synchronize their Ca2+ transients immediately after the end of an escape behavior. Using optogenetics, ablations, and a genetically encoded norepinephrine sensor, we observed that RA synchronous Ca2+ events are mediated by the locus coeruleus (LC)-norepinephrine circuit. RA synchronization did not induce direct excitation or inhibition of tectal neurons. Nevertheless, it modulated the direction selectivity and the long-distance functional correlations among neurons. This mechanism supports freezing behavior following a switch to an alerted state. These results show that LC-mediated neuro-glial interactions modulate the visual system during transitions between behavioral states.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alejandro Uribe-Arias
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Rotem Rozenblat
- The Faculty of Life Sciences and The Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
| | - Ehud Vinepinsky
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Emiliano Marachlian
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Anirudh Kulkarni
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - David Zada
- The Faculty of Life Sciences and The Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
| | - Martin Privat
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Diego Topsakalian
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Sarah Charpy
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Virginie Candat
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Sarah Nourin
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Lior Appelbaum
- The Faculty of Life Sciences and The Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
| | - Germán Sumbre
- Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, 75005 Paris, France.
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18
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Baruchin LJ, Alleman M, Schröder S. Reward Modulates Visual Responses in the Superficial Superior Colliculus of Mice. J Neurosci 2023; 43:8663-8680. [PMID: 37879894 PMCID: PMC7615379 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0089-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2023] [Revised: 10/06/2023] [Accepted: 10/10/2023] [Indexed: 10/27/2023] Open
Abstract
The processing of sensory input is constantly adapting to behavioral demands and internal states. The drive to obtain reward, e.g., searching for water when thirsty, is a strong behavioral demand and associating the reward with its source, a certain environment or action, is paramount for survival. Here, we show that water reward increases subsequent visual activity in the superficial layers of the superior colliculus (SC), which receive direct input from the retina and belong to the earliest stages of visual processing. We trained mice of either sex to perform a visual decision task and recorded the activity of neurons in the SC using two-photon calcium imaging and high-density electrophysiological recordings. Responses to visual stimuli in around 20% of visually responsive neurons in the superficial SC were affected by reward delivered in the previous trial. Reward mostly increased visual responses independent from modulations due to pupil size changes. The modulation of visual responses by reward could not be explained by movements like licking. It was specific to responses to the following visual stimulus, independent of slow fluctuations in neural activity and independent of how often the stimulus was previously rewarded. Electrophysiological recordings confirmed these results and revealed that reward affected the early phase of the visual response around 80 ms after stimulus onset. Modulation of visual responses by reward, but not pupil size, significantly improved the performance of a population decoder to detect visual stimuli, indicating the relevance of reward modulation for the visual performance of the animal.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT To learn which actions lead to food, water, or safety, it is necessary to integrate the receiving of reward with sensory stimuli related to the reward. Cortical stages of sensory processing have been shown to represent stimulus-reward associations. Here, we show, however, that reward influences neurons at a much earlier stage of sensory processing, the superior colliculus (SC), receiving direct input from the retina. Visual responses were increased shortly after the animal received the water reward, which led to an improved stimulus signal in the population of these visual neurons. Reward modulation of early visual responses may thus improve perception of visual environments predictive of reward.
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Affiliation(s)
- Liad J Baruchin
- School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, United Kingdom
| | - Matteo Alleman
- Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
| | - Sylvia Schröder
- School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, United Kingdom
- Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
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19
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Bogadhi AR, Hafed ZM. Express detection of visual objects by primate superior colliculus neurons. Sci Rep 2023; 13:21730. [PMID: 38066070 PMCID: PMC10709564 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-48979-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2023] [Accepted: 12/02/2023] [Indexed: 12/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Primate superior colliculus (SC) neurons exhibit visual feature tuning properties and are implicated in a subcortical network hypothesized to mediate fast threat and/or conspecific detection. However, the mechanisms through which SC neurons contribute to peripheral object detection, for supporting rapid orienting responses, remain unclear. Here we explored whether, and how quickly, SC neurons detect real-life object stimuli. We presented experimentally-controlled gray-scale images of seven different object categories, and their corresponding luminance- and spectral-matched image controls, within the extrafoveal response fields of SC neurons. We found that all of our functionally-identified SC neuron types preferentially detected real-life objects even in their very first stimulus-evoked visual bursts. Intriguingly, even visually-responsive motor-related neurons exhibited such robust early object detection. We further identified spatial frequency information in visual images as an important, but not exhaustive, source for the earliest (within 100 ms) but not for the late (after 100 ms) component of object detection by SC neurons. Our results demonstrate rapid and robust detection of extrafoveal visual objects by the SC. Besides supporting recent evidence that even SC saccade-related motor bursts can preferentially represent visual objects, these results reveal a plausible mechanism through which rapid orienting responses to extrafoveal visual objects can be mediated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amarender R Bogadhi
- Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller Str. 25, 72076, Tübingen, Germany
- Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, 72076, Tübingen, Germany
- Central Nervous System Diseases Research, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, 88400, Biberach, Germany
| | - Ziad M Hafed
- Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Otfried-Müller Str. 25, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
- Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
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20
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Ali MA, Lischka K, Preuss SJ, Trivedi CA, Bollmann JH. A synaptic corollary discharge signal suppresses midbrain visual processing during saccade-like locomotion. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7592. [PMID: 37996414 PMCID: PMC10667368 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43255-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2022] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/25/2023] Open
Abstract
In motor control, the brain not only sends motor commands to the periphery, but also generates concurrent internal signals known as corollary discharge (CD) that influence sensory information processing around the time of movement. CD signals are important for identifying sensory input arising from self-motion and to compensate for it, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Using whole-cell patch clamp recordings from neurons in the zebrafish optic tectum, we discovered an inhibitory synaptic signal, temporally locked to spontaneous and visually driven locomotion. This motor-related inhibition was appropriately timed to counteract visually driven excitatory input arising from the fish's own motion, and transiently suppressed tectal spiking activity. High-resolution calcium imaging revealed localized motor-related signals in the tectal neuropil and the upstream torus longitudinalis, suggesting that CD enters the tectum via this pathway. Together, our results show how visual processing is suppressed during self-motion by motor-related phasic inhibition. This may help explain perceptual saccadic suppression observed in many species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mir Ahsan Ali
- Developmental Biology, Institute of Biology I, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, 79104, Freiburg, Germany
| | - Katharina Lischka
- Developmental Biology, Institute of Biology I, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, 79104, Freiburg, Germany
| | - Stephanie J Preuss
- Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany
- Springer Nature Group, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Chintan A Trivedi
- Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany
- Dept Cell and Developmental Biology, University College London, London, UK
| | - Johann H Bollmann
- Developmental Biology, Institute of Biology I, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, 79104, Freiburg, Germany.
- Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.
- Bernstein Center Freiburg, University of Freiburg, 79104, Freiburg, Germany.
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21
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Molotkov D, Ferrarese L, Boissonnet T, Asari H. Topographic axonal projection at single-cell precision supports local retinotopy in the mouse superior colliculus. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7418. [PMID: 37973798 PMCID: PMC10654506 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43218-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2022] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Retinotopy, like all long-range projections, can arise from the axons themselves or their targets. The underlying connectivity pattern, however, remains elusive at the fine scale in the mammalian brain. To address this question, we functionally mapped the spatial organization of the input axons and target neurons in the female mouse retinocollicular pathway at single-cell resolution using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging. We found a near-perfect retinotopic tiling of retinal ganglion cell axon terminals, with an average error below 30 μm or 2° of visual angle. The precision of retinotopy was relatively lower for local neurons in the superior colliculus. Subsequent data-driven modeling ascribed it to a low input convergence, on average 5.5 retinal ganglion cell inputs per postsynaptic cell in the superior colliculus. These results indicate that retinotopy arises largely from topographically precise input from presynaptic cells, rather than elaborating local circuitry to reconstruct the topography by postsynaptic cells.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dmitry Molotkov
- Epigenetics and Neurobiology Unit, EMBL Rome, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Monterotondo, 00015, Italy
| | - Leiron Ferrarese
- Epigenetics and Neurobiology Unit, EMBL Rome, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Monterotondo, 00015, Italy
| | - Tom Boissonnet
- Epigenetics and Neurobiology Unit, EMBL Rome, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Monterotondo, 00015, Italy
- Collaboration for joint PhD degree between EMBL and Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences, La Tronche, 38700, France
- Center for Advanced Imaging, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, 40225, Germany
| | - Hiroki Asari
- Epigenetics and Neurobiology Unit, EMBL Rome, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Monterotondo, 00015, Italy.
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22
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Wu K, Wang D, Wang Y, Tang P, Li X, Pan Y, Tao HW, Zhang LI, Liang F. Distinct circuits in anterior cingulate cortex encode safety assessment and mediate flexibility of fear reactions. Neuron 2023; 111:3650-3667.e6. [PMID: 37652003 PMCID: PMC10990237 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.08.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2023] [Revised: 07/15/2023] [Accepted: 08/08/2023] [Indexed: 09/02/2023]
Abstract
Safety assessment and threat evaluation are crucial for animals to live and survive in the wilderness. However, neural circuits underlying safety assessment and their transformation to mediate flexibility of fear-induced defensive behaviors remain largely unknown. Here, we report that distinct neuronal populations in mouse anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) encode safety status by selectively responding under different contexts of auditory threats, with one preferably activated when an animal staysing in a self-deemed safe zone and another specifically activated in more dangerous environmental settings that led to escape behavior. The safety-responding neurons preferentially target the zona incerta (ZI), which suppresses the superior colliculus (SC) via its GABAergic projection, while the danger-responding neurons preferentially target and excite SC. These distinct corticofugal pathways antagonistically modulate SC responses to threat, resulting in context-dependent expression of fear reactions. Thus, ACC serves as a critical node to encode safety/danger assessment and mediate behavioral flexibility through differential top-down circuits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kaibin Wu
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Department of Anaesthesiology, Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510220, China; Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Dijia Wang
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Department of Anaesthesiology, Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510220, China; Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Yuwei Wang
- Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Peiwen Tang
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Department of Anaesthesiology, Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510220, China; Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Xuan Li
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Yidi Pan
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Huizhong W Tao
- Center for Neural Circuits & Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA; Department of Physiology & Neuroscience, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA
| | - Li I Zhang
- Center for Neural Circuits & Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA; Department of Physiology & Neuroscience, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA
| | - Feixue Liang
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Department of Anaesthesiology, Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510220, China; Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Psychiatric Disorders, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China; Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China.
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23
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Thomas A, Yang W, Wang C, Tipparaju SL, Chen G, Sullivan B, Swiekatowski K, Tatam M, Gerfen C, Li N. Superior colliculus bidirectionally modulates choice activity in frontal cortex. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7358. [PMID: 37963894 PMCID: PMC10645979 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43252-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/22/2023] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Action selection occurs through competition between potential choice options. Neural correlates of choice competition are observed across frontal cortex and downstream superior colliculus (SC) during decision-making, yet how these regions interact to mediate choice competition remains unresolved. Here we report that SC can bidirectionally modulate choice competition and drive choice activity in frontal cortex. In the mouse, topographically matched regions of frontal cortex and SC formed a descending motor pathway for directional licking and a re-entrant loop via the thalamus. During decision-making, distinct neuronal populations in both frontal cortex and SC encoded opposing lick directions and exhibited competitive interactions. SC GABAergic neurons encoded ipsilateral choice and locally inhibited glutamatergic neurons that encoded contralateral choice. Activating or suppressing these cell types could bidirectionally drive choice activity in frontal cortex. These results thus identify SC as a major locus to modulate choice competition within the broader action selection network.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alyse Thomas
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Weiguo Yang
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Catherine Wang
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | | | - Guang Chen
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Brennan Sullivan
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Kylie Swiekatowski
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Mahima Tatam
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Charles Gerfen
- Section on Neuroanatomy, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Nuo Li
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
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24
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Li Z, Peng B, Huang JJ, Zhang Y, Seo MB, Fang Q, Zhang GW, Zhang X, Zhang LI, Tao HW. Enhancement and contextual modulation of visuospatial processing by thalamocollicular projections from ventral lateral geniculate nucleus. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7278. [PMID: 37949869 PMCID: PMC10638288 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43147-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2023] [Accepted: 11/01/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023] Open
Abstract
In the mammalian visual system, the ventral lateral geniculate nucleus (vLGN) of the thalamus receives salient visual input from the retina and sends prominent GABAergic axons to the superior colliculus (SC). However, whether and how vLGN contributes to fundamental visual information processing remains largely unclear. Here, we report in mice that vLGN facilitates visually-guided approaching behavior mediated by the lateral SC and enhances the sensitivity of visual object detection. This can be attributed to the extremely broad spatial integration of vLGN neurons, as reflected in their much lower preferred spatial frequencies and broader spatial receptive fields than SC neurons. Through GABAergic thalamocollicular projections, vLGN specifically exerts prominent surround suppression of visuospatial processing in SC, leading to a fine tuning of SC preferences to higher spatial frequencies and smaller objects in a context-dependent manner. Thus, as an essential component of the central visual processing pathway, vLGN serves to refine and contextually modulate visuospatial processing in SC-mediated visuomotor behaviors via visually-driven long-range feedforward inhibition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhong Li
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Bo Peng
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Junxiang J Huang
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
- Graduate Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Yuan Zhang
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Michelle B Seo
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Qi Fang
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
- Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Guang-Wei Zhang
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA
| | - Xiaohui Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Li I Zhang
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA.
- Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA.
| | - Huizhong Whit Tao
- Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA.
- Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA.
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25
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Bean NL, Stein BE, Rowland BA. Cross-modal exposure restores multisensory enhancement after hemianopia. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:11036-11046. [PMID: 37724427 PMCID: PMC10646694 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2023] [Revised: 08/28/2023] [Accepted: 08/30/2023] [Indexed: 09/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Hemianopia is a common consequence of unilateral damage to visual cortex that manifests as a profound blindness in contralesional space. A noninvasive cross-modal (visual-auditory) exposure paradigm has been developed in an animal model to ameliorate this disorder. Repeated stimulation of a visual-auditory stimulus restores overt responses to visual stimuli in the blinded hemifield. It is believed to accomplish this by enhancing the visual sensitivity of circuits remaining after a lesion of visual cortex; in particular, circuits involving the multisensory neurons of the superior colliculus. Neurons in this midbrain structure are known to integrate spatiotemporally congruent visual and auditory signals to amplify their responses, which, in turn, enhances behavioral performance. Here we evaluated the relationship between the rehabilitation of hemianopia and this process of multisensory integration. Induction of hemianopia also eliminated multisensory enhancement in the blinded hemifield. Both vision and multisensory enhancement rapidly recovered with the rehabilitative cross-modal exposures. However, although both reached pre-lesion levels at similar rates, they did so with different spatial patterns. The results suggest that the capability for multisensory integration and enhancement is not a pre-requisite for visual recovery in hemianopia, and that the underlying mechanisms for recovery may be more complex than currently appreciated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naomi L Bean
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Barry E Stein
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Benjamin A Rowland
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States
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26
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Prabhu NG, Himmelbach M. Activity in the human superior colliculus associated with reaching for tactile targets. Neuroimage 2023; 280:120322. [PMID: 37586443 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120322] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2023] [Revised: 08/09/2023] [Accepted: 08/10/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
The superior colliculus (SC) plays a major role in orienting movements of eyes and the head and in the allocation of attention. Functions of the SC have been mostly investigated in animal models, including non-human primates. Differences in the SC's anatomy and function between different species question extrapolations of these studies to humans without further validation. Few electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies in animal models and humans have reported a role of the SC in visually guided reaching movements. Using BOLD fMRI imaging, we sought to decipher if the SC is also active during reaching movements guided by tactile stimulation. Participants executed reaching movements to visual and tactile target positions. When contrasted against visual and tactile stimulation without reaching, we found increased SC activity with reaching not only for visual but also for tactile targets. We conclude that the SC's involvement in reaching does not rely on visual inputs. It is also independent from a specific sensory modality. Our results indicate a general involvement of the human SC in upper limb reaching movements.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nikhil G Prabhu
- Division of Neuropsychology, Center of Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; International Max Planck Research School in Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
| | - Marc Himmelbach
- Division of Neuropsychology, Center of Neurology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany.
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27
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Fracasso A, Buonocore A, Hafed ZM. Peri-Saccadic Orientation Identification Performance and Visual Neural Sensitivity Are Higher in the Upper Visual Field. J Neurosci 2023; 43:6884-6897. [PMID: 37640553 PMCID: PMC10573757 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1740-22.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/11/2022] [Revised: 08/02/2023] [Accepted: 08/06/2023] [Indexed: 08/31/2023] Open
Abstract
Visual neural processing is distributed among a multitude of sensory and sensory-motor brain areas exhibiting varying degrees of functional specializations and spatial representational anisotropies. Such diversity raises the question of how perceptual performance is determined, at any one moment in time, during natural active visual behavior. Here, exploiting a known dichotomy between the primary visual cortex (V1) and superior colliculus (SC) in representing either the upper or lower visual fields, we asked whether peri-saccadic orientation identification performance is dominated by one or the other spatial anisotropy. Humans (48 participants, 29 females) reported the orientation of peri-saccadic upper visual field stimuli significantly better than lower visual field stimuli, unlike their performance during steady-state gaze fixation, and contrary to expected perceptual superiority in the lower visual field in the absence of saccades. Consistent with this, peri-saccadic superior colliculus visual neural responses in two male rhesus macaque monkeys were also significantly stronger in the upper visual field than in the lower visual field. Thus, peri-saccadic orientation identification performance is more in line with oculomotor, rather than visual, map spatial anisotropies.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Different brain areas respond to visual stimulation, but they differ in the degrees of functional specializations and spatial anisotropies that they exhibit. For example, the superior colliculus (SC) both responds to visual stimulation, like the primary visual cortex (V1), and controls oculomotor behavior. Compared with the primary visual cortex, the superior colliculus exhibits an opposite pattern of upper/lower visual field anisotropy, being more sensitive to the upper visual field. Here, we show that human peri-saccadic orientation identification performance is better in the upper compared with the lower visual field. Consistent with this, monkey superior colliculus visual neural responses to peri-saccadic stimuli follow a similar pattern. Our results indicate that peri-saccadic perceptual performance reflects oculomotor, rather than visual, map spatial anisotropies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alessio Fracasso
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QE, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - Antimo Buonocore
- Department of Educational, Psychological and Communication Sciences, Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples 80135, Italy
| | - Ziad M Hafed
- Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen University, Tübingen 72076, Germany
- Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tübingen University, Tübingen 72076, Germany
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28
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Choi JS, Ayupe AC, Beckedorff F, Catanuto P, McCartan R, Levay K, Park KK. Single-nucleus RNA sequencing of developing superior colliculus identifies neuronal diversity and candidate mediators of circuit assembly. Cell Rep 2023; 42:113037. [PMID: 37624694 PMCID: PMC10592058 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113037] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2023] [Revised: 06/26/2023] [Accepted: 08/11/2023] [Indexed: 08/27/2023] Open
Abstract
The superior colliculus (SC) is a sensorimotor structure in the midbrain that integrates input from multiple sensory modalities to initiate motor commands. It undergoes well-characterized steps of circuit assembly during development, rendering the mouse SC a popular model to study establishment of neural connectivity. Here we perform single-nucleus RNA-sequencing analysis of the mouse SC isolated at various developmental time points. Our study provides a transcriptomic landscape of the cell types that comprise the SC across murine development with particular emphasis on neuronal heterogeneity. We report a repertoire of genes differentially expressed across the different postnatal ages, many of which are known to regulate axon guidance and synapse formation. Using these data, we find that Pax7 expression is restricted to a subset of GABAergic neurons. Our data provide a valuable resource for interrogating the mechanisms of circuit development and identifying markers for manipulating specific SC neuronal populations and circuits.
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Affiliation(s)
- James S Choi
- Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1095 NW 14th Ter., Miami, FL 33136, USA
| | - Ana C Ayupe
- Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1095 NW 14th Ter., Miami, FL 33136, USA
| | - Felipe Beckedorff
- Department of Human Genetics, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1501 NW 10th Avenue, Miami, FL 33136, USA
| | - Paola Catanuto
- Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1095 NW 14th Ter., Miami, FL 33136, USA
| | - Robyn McCartan
- Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1095 NW 14th Ter., Miami, FL 33136, USA
| | - Konstantin Levay
- Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1095 NW 14th Ter., Miami, FL 33136, USA
| | - Kevin K Park
- Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, 1095 NW 14th Ter., Miami, FL 33136, USA.
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29
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Liang Y, Lu R, Borges K, Ji N. Stimulus edges induce orientation tuning in superior colliculus. Nat Commun 2023; 14:4756. [PMID: 37553352 PMCID: PMC10409754 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40444-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2022] [Accepted: 07/27/2023] [Indexed: 08/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Orientation columns exist in the primary visual cortex (V1) of cat and primates but not mouse. Intriguingly, some recent studies reported the presence of orientation and direction columns in the mouse superficial superior colliculus (sSC), while others reported a lack of columnar organization therein. Using in vivo calcium imaging of sSC in the awake mouse brain, we found that the presence of columns is highly stimulus dependent. Specifically, we observed orientation and direction columns formed by sSC neurons retinotopically mapped to the edge of grating stimuli. For both excitatory and inhibitory neurons in sSC, orientation selectivity can be induced by the edge with their preferred orientation perpendicular to the edge orientation. Furthermore, we found that this edge-induced orientation selectivity is associated with saliency encoding. These findings indicate that the tuning properties of sSC neurons are not fixed by circuit architecture but rather dependent on the spatiotemporal properties of the stimulus.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yajie Liang
- Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, 20148, USA
- Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA
| | - Rongwen Lu
- Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, 20148, USA
| | - Katharine Borges
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
| | - Na Ji
- Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, 20148, USA.
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
- Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
- Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
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30
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Brenner JM, Beltramo R, Gerfen CR, Ruediger S, Scanziani M. A genetically defined tecto-thalamic pathway drives a system of superior-colliculus-dependent visual cortices. Neuron 2023; 111:2247-2257.e7. [PMID: 37172584 PMCID: PMC10524301 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.04.022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2022] [Revised: 02/13/2023] [Accepted: 04/17/2023] [Indexed: 05/15/2023]
Abstract
Cortical responses to visual stimuli are believed to rely on the geniculo-striate pathway. However, recent work has challenged this notion by showing that responses in the postrhinal cortex (POR), a visual cortical area, instead depend on the tecto-thalamic pathway, which conveys visual information to the cortex via the superior colliculus (SC). Does POR's SC-dependence point to a wider system of tecto-thalamic cortical visual areas? What information might this system extract from the visual world? We discovered multiple mouse cortical areas whose visual responses rely on SC, with the most lateral showing the strongest SC-dependence. This system is driven by a genetically defined cell type that connects the SC to the pulvinar thalamic nucleus. Finally, we show that SC-dependent cortices distinguish self-generated from externally generated visual motion. Hence, lateral visual areas comprise a system that relies on the tecto-thalamic pathway and contributes to processing visual motion as animals move through the environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joshua M Brenner
- Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Riccardo Beltramo
- Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | | | - Sarah Ruediger
- Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Massimo Scanziani
- Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
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31
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Zahler SH, Taylor DE, Wright BS, Wong JY, Shvareva VA, Park YA, Feinberg EH. Hindbrain modules differentially transform activity of single collicular neurons to coordinate movements. Cell 2023; 186:3062-3078.e20. [PMID: 37343561 PMCID: PMC10424787 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2022] [Revised: 04/10/2023] [Accepted: 05/19/2023] [Indexed: 06/23/2023]
Abstract
Seemingly simple behaviors such as swatting a mosquito or glancing at a signpost involve the precise coordination of multiple body parts. Neural control of coordinated movements is widely thought to entail transforming a desired overall displacement into displacements for each body part. Here we reveal a different logic implemented in the mouse gaze system. Stimulating superior colliculus (SC) elicits head movements with stereotyped displacements but eye movements with stereotyped endpoints. This is achieved by individual SC neurons whose branched axons innervate modules in medulla and pons that drive head movements with stereotyped displacements and eye movements with stereotyped endpoints, respectively. Thus, single neurons specify a mixture of endpoints and displacements for different body parts, not overall displacement, with displacements for different body parts computed at distinct anatomical stages. Our study establishes an approach for unraveling motor hierarchies and identifies a logic for coordinating movements and the resulting pose.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian H Zahler
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - David E Taylor
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Brennan S Wright
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Joey Y Wong
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Varvara A Shvareva
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Yusol A Park
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
| | - Evan H Feinberg
- Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
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32
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Bourrelly C, Massot C, Gandhi NJ. Rapid Input-Output Transformation between Local Field Potential and Spiking Activity during Sensation but not Action in the Superior Colliculus. J Neurosci 2023; 43:4047-4061. [PMID: 37127365 PMCID: PMC10255026 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2318-22.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2022] [Revised: 04/19/2023] [Accepted: 04/21/2023] [Indexed: 05/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Sensorimotor transformation is the sequential process of registering a sensory signal in the environment and then responding with the relevant movement at an appropriate time. For visually guided eye movements, neural signatures in the form of spiking activity of neurons have been extensively studied along the dorsoventral axis of the superior colliculus (SC). In contrast, the local field potential (LFP), which represents the putative input to a region, remains largely unexplored in the SC. We therefore compared amplitude levels and onset times of both spike bursts and LFP modulations recorded simultaneously with a laminar probe along the dorsoventral axis of SC in 3 male monkeys performing the visually guided delayed saccade task. Both signals displayed a gradual transition from sensory activity in the superficial layers to a predominantly motor response in the deeper layers, although the transition from principally sensory to mostly motor response occurred ∼500 μm deeper for the LFP. For the sensory response, LFP modulation preceded spike burst onset by <5 ms in the superficial and intermediate layers and only when data were analyzed on a trial-by-trial basis. The motor burst in the spiking activity led LFP modulation by >25 ms in the deeper layers. The results reveal a fast and efficient input-output transformation between LFP modulation and spike burst in the visually responsive layers activity during sensation but not during action. The spiking pattern observed during the movement phase is likely dominated by intracollicular processing that is not captured in the LFP.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT What is the sequence of events between local field potential (LFP) modulation and spiking activity during sensorimotor transformation? A trial-by-trial analysis reveals that the LFP activity leads the spike burst in the superficial and intermediate layers of the superior colliculus during visual processing, while both trial-by-trial and the average analyses show that the spike burst leads the LFP modulation during movement generation. These results suggest an almost instantaneous LFP input, spike burst output transformation in the visually responsive layers of the superior colliculus when registering the stimulus. In contrast, substantial intracollicular processing likely results in a saccade-related spike burst that leads LFP modulation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Clara Bourrelly
- Departments of Bioengineering
- Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
| | - Corentin Massot
- Departments of Bioengineering
- Neurobiology
- Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
| | - Neeraj J Gandhi
- Departments of Bioengineering
- Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
- Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
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Broersen R, Stuart GJ. In vivo whole-cell recording from morphologically identified mouse superior colliculus neurons. STAR Protoc 2023; 4:101963. [PMID: 36542520 PMCID: PMC9795524 DOI: 10.1016/j.xpro.2022.101963] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2022] [Revised: 11/04/2022] [Accepted: 12/06/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
In vivo whole-cell recording, when combined with morphological characterization after biocytin labeling, is a powerful technique to study subthreshold synaptic processing in cell-type-identified neuronal populations. Here, we describe steps for performing whole-cell recordings in the superior colliculus of urethane-anesthetized mice, a major visual processing region in the rodent brain. We detail two types of visual stimulation techniques: full-field light-emitting diode (LED) flashes and visual stimuli shown on monitors. While we focus on superior colliculus, this protocol is applicable to other brain areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robin Broersen
- Eccles Institute of Neuroscience, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
| | - Greg J Stuart
- Eccles Institute of Neuroscience, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
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34
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Zhou J, Hormigo S, Busel N, Castro-Alamancos MA. The Orienting Reflex Reveals Behavioral States Set by Demanding Contexts: Role of the Superior Colliculus. J Neurosci 2023; 43:1778-1796. [PMID: 36750370 PMCID: PMC10010463 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1643-22.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2022] [Revised: 01/26/2023] [Accepted: 02/01/2023] [Indexed: 02/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Sensory stimuli can trigger an orienting reflex (response) by which animals move the head to position their sensors (e.g., eyes, pinna, whiskers). Orienting responses may be important to evaluate stimuli that call for action (e.g., approach, escape, ignore), but little is known about the dynamics of orienting responses in the context of goal-directed actions. Using mice of either sex, we found that, during a signaled avoidance action, the orienting response evoked by the conditioned stimulus (CS) consisted of a fast head movement containing rotational and translational components that varied substantially as a function of the behavioral and underlying brain states of the animal set by different task contingencies. Larger CS-evoked orienting responses were associated with high-intensity auditory stimuli, failures to produce the appropriate signaled action, and behavioral states resulting from uncertain or demanding situations and the animal's ability to cope with them. As a prototypical orienting neural circuit, we confirmed that the superior colliculus controls and codes the direction of spontaneous exploratory orienting movements. In addition, superior colliculus activity correlated with CS-evoked orienting responses, and either its optogenetic inhibition or excitation potentiated CS-evoked orienting responses, which are likely generated downstream in the medulla. CS-evoked orienting responses may be a useful probe to assess behavioral and related brain states, and state-dependent modulation of orienting responses may involve the superior colliculus.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Humans and other animals produce an orienting reflex (also known as orienting response) by which they rapidly orient their head and sensors to evaluate novel or salient stimuli. Spontaneous orienting movements also occur during exploration of the environment in the absence of explicit, salient stimuli. We monitored stimulus-evoked orienting responses in mice performing signaled avoidance behaviors and found that these responses reflect the behavioral state of the animal set by contextual demands and the animal's ability to cope with them. Various experiments involving the superior colliculus revealed a well-established role in spontaneous orienting but only an influencing effect over orienting responses. Stimulus-evoked orienting responses may be a useful probe of behavioral and related brain states.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ji Zhou
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut 06001
| | - Sebastian Hormigo
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut 06001
| | - Natan Busel
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut 06001
| | - Manuel A Castro-Alamancos
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut 06001
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Johnson KO, Harel L, Triplett JW. Postsynaptic NMDA Receptor Expression Is Required for Visual Corticocollicular Projection Refinement in the Mouse Superior Colliculus. J Neurosci 2023; 43:1310-1320. [PMID: 36717228 PMCID: PMC9987568 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1473-22.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2022] [Revised: 11/09/2022] [Accepted: 11/13/2022] [Indexed: 01/31/2023] Open
Abstract
Efficient sensory processing of spatial information is facilitated through the organization of neuronal connections into topographic maps of space. In integrative sensory centers, converging topographic maps must be aligned to merge spatially congruent information. The superior colliculus (SC) receives topographically ordered visual inputs from retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the eye and layer 5 neurons in the primary visual cortex (L5-V1). Previous studies suggest that RGCs instruct the alignment of later-arriving L5-V1 inputs in an activity-dependent manner. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this remain unclear. Here, we explored the role of NMDA receptors in visual map alignment in the SC using a conditional genetic knockout approach. We leveraged a novel knock-in mouse line that expresses tamoxifen-inducible Cre recombinase under the control of the Tal1 gene (Tal1CreERT2 ), which we show allows for specific recombination in the superficial layers of the SC. We used Tal1CreERT2 mice of either sex to conditionally delete the obligate GluN1 subunit of the NMDA receptor (SC-cKO) during the period of visual map alignment. We observed a significant disruption of L5-V1 axon terminal organization in the SC of SC-cKO mice. Importantly, retinocollicular topography was unaffected in this context, suggesting that alignment is also disrupted. Time-course experiments suggest that NMDA receptors may play a critical role in the refinement of L5-V1 inputs in the SC. Together, these data implicate NMDA receptors as critical mediators of activity-dependent visual map alignment in the SC.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Alignment of topographic inputs is critical for integration of spatially congruent sensory information; however, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this complex process. Here, we took a conditional genetic approach to explore the role of NMDA receptors in the alignment of retinal and cortical visual inputs in the superior colliculus. We characterize a novel mouse line providing spatial and temporal control of recombination in the superior colliculus and reveal a critical role for NMDA expression in visual map alignment. These data support a role for neuronal activity in visual map alignment and provide mechanistic insight into this complex developmental process.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristy O Johnson
- Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Research Institute, Washington, DC 20010
- Institute for Biomedical Sciences, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037
| | - Leeor Harel
- Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Research Institute, Washington, DC 20010
| | - Jason W Triplett
- Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Research Institute, Washington, DC 20010
- Institute for Biomedical Sciences, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037
- Department of Pediatrics, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037
- Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20037
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Bean NL, Smyre SA, Stein BE, Rowland BA. Noise-rearing precludes the behavioral benefits of multisensory integration. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:948-958. [PMID: 35332919 PMCID: PMC9930622 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac113] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2021] [Revised: 02/23/2022] [Accepted: 02/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Concordant visual-auditory stimuli enhance the responses of individual superior colliculus (SC) neurons. This neuronal capacity for "multisensory integration" is not innate: it is acquired only after substantial cross-modal (e.g. auditory-visual) experience. Masking transient auditory cues by raising animals in omnidirectional sound ("noise-rearing") precludes their ability to obtain this experience and the ability of the SC to construct a normal multisensory (auditory-visual) transform. SC responses to combinations of concordant visual-auditory stimuli are depressed, rather than enhanced. The present experiments examined the behavioral consequence of this rearing condition in a simple detection/localization task. In the first experiment, the auditory component of the concordant cross-modal pair was novel, and only the visual stimulus was a target. In the second experiment, both component stimuli were targets. Noise-reared animals failed to show multisensory performance benefits in either experiment. These results reveal a close parallel between behavior and single neuron physiology in the multisensory deficits that are induced when noise disrupts early visual-auditory experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naomi L Bean
- Corresponding author: Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States.
| | | | - Barry E Stein
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Benjamin A Rowland
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
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Campagner D, Vale R, Tan YL, Iordanidou P, Pavón Arocas O, Claudi F, Stempel AV, Keshavarzi S, Petersen RS, Margrie TW, Branco T. A cortico-collicular circuit for orienting to shelter during escape. Nature 2023; 613:111-119. [PMID: 36544025 PMCID: PMC7614651 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05553-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2020] [Accepted: 11/10/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
Abstract
When faced with predatory threats, escape towards shelter is an adaptive action that offers long-term protection against the attacker. Animals rely on knowledge of safe locations in the environment to instinctively execute rapid shelter-directed escape actions1,2. Although previous work has identified neural mechanisms of escape initiation3,4, it is not known how the escape circuit incorporates spatial information to execute rapid flights along the most efficient route to shelter. Here we show that the mouse retrosplenial cortex (RSP) and superior colliculus (SC) form a circuit that encodes the shelter-direction vector and is specifically required for accurately orienting to shelter during escape. Shelter direction is encoded in RSP and SC neurons in egocentric coordinates and SC shelter-direction tuning depends on RSP activity. Inactivation of the RSP-SC pathway disrupts the orientation to shelter and causes escapes away from the optimal shelter-directed route, but does not lead to generic deficits in orientation or spatial navigation. We find that the RSP and SC are monosynaptically connected and form a feedforward lateral inhibition microcircuit that strongly drives the inhibitory collicular network because of higher RSP input convergence and synaptic integration efficiency in inhibitory SC neurons. This results in broad shelter-direction tuning in inhibitory SC neurons and sharply tuned excitatory SC neurons. These findings are recapitulated by a biologically constrained spiking network model in which RSP input to the local SC recurrent ring architecture generates a circular shelter-direction map. We propose that this RSP-SC circuit might be specialized for generating collicular representations of memorized spatial goals that are readily accessible to the motor system during escape, or more broadly, during navigation when the goal must be reached as fast as possible.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dario Campagner
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
- UCL Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, London, UK
| | - Ruben Vale
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
- MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK
| | - Yu Lin Tan
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
| | | | - Oriol Pavón Arocas
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
| | - Federico Claudi
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
| | - A Vanessa Stempel
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
| | | | | | - Troy W Margrie
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK
| | - Tiago Branco
- UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK.
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38
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Baranauskas G, Rysevaite-Kyguoliene K, Sabeckis I, Pauza DH. Saturation of visual responses explains size tuning in rat collicular neurons. Eur J Neurosci 2023; 57:285-309. [PMID: 36451583 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15877] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Revised: 08/03/2022] [Accepted: 11/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022]
Abstract
The receptive field of many visual neurons is composed of a central responsive area, the classical receptive field, and a non-classical receptive field, also called the "suppressive surround." A visual stimulus placed in the suppressive surround does not induce any response but modulates visual responses to stimuli within the classical receptive field, usually by suppressing them. Therefore, visual responses become smaller when stimuli exceed the classical receptive field size. The stimulus size inducing the maximal response is called the preferred stimulus size. In cortex, there is good correspondence between the sizes of the classical receptive field and the preferred stimulus. In contrast, in the rodent superior colliculus, the preferred size is often several fold smaller than the classical receptive field size. Here, we show that in the rat superior colliculus, the preferred stimulus size changes as a square root of the contrast inverse and the classical receptive field size is independent of contrast. In addition, responses to annulus were largely independent of the inner hole size. To explain these data, three models were tested: the divisive modulation of the gain by the suppressive surround (the "normalization" model), the difference of the Gaussians, and a divisive model that incorporates saturation to light flux. Despite the same number of free parameters, the model incorporating saturation to light performed the best. Thus, our data indicate that in rats, the saturation to light can be a dominant phenomenon even at relatively low illumination levels defining visual responses in the collicular neurons.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gytis Baranauskas
- Neurophysiology Laboratory, Neuroscience Institute, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania
| | | | - Ignas Sabeckis
- Anatomy Institute, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania
| | - Dainius H Pauza
- Anatomy Institute, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania
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39
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Sainsbury TTJ, Diana G, Meyer MP. Topographically Localized Modulation of Tectal Cell Spatial Tuning by Complex Natural Scenes. eNeuro 2023; 10:ENEURO.0223-22.2022. [PMID: 36543538 PMCID: PMC9833049 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0223-22.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2022] [Revised: 10/26/2022] [Accepted: 11/01/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
The tuning properties of neurons in the visual system can be contextually modulated by the statistics of the area surrounding their receptive field (RF), particularly when the surround contains natural features. However, stimuli presented in specific egocentric locations may have greater behavioral relevance, raising the possibility that the extent of contextual modulation may vary with position in visual space. To explore this possibility, we utilized the small size and optical transparency of the larval zebrafish to describe the form and spatial arrangement of contextually modulated cells throughout an entire tectal hemisphere. We found that the spatial tuning of tectal neurons to a prey-like stimulus sharpens when the stimulus is presented against a background with the statistics of complex natural scenes, relative to a featureless background. These neurons are confined to a spatially restricted region of the tectum and have receptive fields centered within a region of visual space in which the presence of prey preferentially triggers hunting behavior. Our results suggest that contextual modulation of tectal neurons by complex backgrounds may facilitate prey-localization in cluttered visual environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas T J Sainsbury
- The Centre for Developmental Neurobiology and MRC Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, SE1 1UL
| | - Giovanni Diana
- The Centre for Developmental Neurobiology and MRC Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, SE1 1UL
- Insitut Pasteur, University of Paris, Paris, France, 75015
- Sampled Analytics, Arcueil, France, 94110
| | - Martin P Meyer
- The Centre for Developmental Neurobiology and MRC Center for Neurodevelopmental Disorders, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, SE1 1UL
- Lundbeck Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2100
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40
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Heusser MR, Bourrelly C, Gandhi NJ. Decoding the Time Course of Spatial Information from Spiking and Local Field Potential Activities in the Superior Colliculus. eNeuro 2022; 9:ENEURO.0347-22.2022. [PMID: 36379711 PMCID: PMC9718355 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0347-22.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/28/2022] [Revised: 10/31/2022] [Accepted: 11/05/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Place code representation is ubiquitous in circuits that encode spatial parameters. For visually guided eye movements, neurons in many brain regions emit spikes when a stimulus is presented in their receptive fields and/or when a movement is directed into their movement fields. Crucially, individual neurons respond for a broad range of directions or eccentricities away from the optimal vector, making it difficult to decode the stimulus location or the saccade vector from each cell's activity. We investigated whether it is possible to decode the spatial parameter with a population-level analysis, even when the optimal vectors are similar across neurons. Spiking activity and local field potentials (LFPs) in the superior colliculus (SC) were recorded with a laminar probe as monkeys performed a delayed saccade task to one of eight targets radially equidistant in direction. A classifier was applied offline to decode the spatial configuration as the trial progresses from sensation to action. For spiking activity, decoding performance across all eight directions was highest during the visual and motor epochs and lower but well above chance during the delay period. Classification performance followed a similar pattern for LFP activity too, except the performance during the delay period was limited mostly to the preferred direction. Increasing the number of neurons in the population consistently increased classifier performance for both modalities. Overall, this study demonstrates the power of population activity for decoding spatial information not possible from individual neurons.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michelle R Heusser
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
- Center for Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
| | - Clara Bourrelly
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
- Center for Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
| | - Neeraj J Gandhi
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
- Center for Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
- Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
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41
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Tiriac A, Feller MB. Roles of visually evoked and spontaneous activity in the development of retinal direction selectivity maps. Trends Neurosci 2022; 45:529-538. [PMID: 35491255 DOI: 10.1016/j.tins.2022.04.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/11/2022] [Revised: 03/30/2022] [Accepted: 04/05/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Detecting the direction of motion underlies many visually guided behaviors, from reflexive eye movements to identifying and catching moving objects. A subset of motion sensitive cells are direction selective - responding strongly to motion in one direction and weakly to motion in other directions. In mammals, direction-selective cells are found throughout the visual system, including the retina, superior colliculus, and primary visual cortex. Direction selectivity maps are well characterized in the mouse retina, where the preferred directions of retinal direction-selective cells follow the projections of optic flow, generated by the movements animals make as they navigate their environment. Here, we synthesize recent findings implicating activity-dependent mechanisms in the development of retinal direction selectivity maps, with primary focus on studies in mice, and discuss the implications for the development of direction-selective responses in downstream visual areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexandre Tiriac
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
| | - Marla B Feller
- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
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42
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Maldarelli G, Firzlaff U, Kettler L, Ondracek JM, Luksch H. Two Types of Auditory Spatial Receptive Fields in Different Parts of the Chicken's Midbrain. J Neurosci 2022; 42:4669-4680. [PMID: 35508384 PMCID: PMC9186802 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2204-21.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2021] [Revised: 04/04/2022] [Accepted: 04/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The optic tectum (OT) is an avian midbrain structure involved in the integration of visual and auditory stimuli. Studies in the barn owl, an auditory specialist, have shown that spatial auditory information is topographically represented in the OT. Little is known about how auditory space is represented in the midbrain of birds with generalist hearing, i.e., most of avian species lacking peripheral adaptations such as facial ruffs or asymmetric ears. Thus, we conducted in vivo extracellular recordings of single neurons in the OT and in the external portion of the formatio reticularis lateralis (FRLx), a brain structure located between the inferior colliculus (IC) and the OT, in anaesthetized chickens of either sex. We found that most of the auditory spatial receptive fields (aSRFs) were spatially confined both in azimuth and elevation, divided into two main classes: round aSRFs, mainly present in the OT, and annular aSRFs, with a ring-like shape around the interaural axis, mainly present in the FRLx. Our data further indicate that interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) play a role in the formation of both aSRF classes. These results suggest that, unlike mammals and owls which have a congruent representation of visual and auditory space in the OT, generalist birds separate the computation of auditory space in two different midbrain structures. We hypothesize that the FRLx-annular aSRFs define the distance of a sound source from the axis of the lateral visual fovea, whereas the OT-round aSRFs are involved in multimodal integration of the stimulus around the lateral fovea.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Previous studies implied that auditory spatial receptive fields (aSRFs) in the midbrain of generalist birds are only confined along azimuth. Interestingly, we found SRFs s in the chicken to be confined along both azimuth and elevation. Moreover, the auditory receptive fields are arranged in a concentric manner around the overlapping interaural and visual axes. These data suggest that in generalist birds, which mainly rely on vision, the auditory system mainly serves to align auditory stimuli with the visual axis, while auditory specialized birds like the barn owl compute sound sources more precisely and integrate sound positions in the multimodal space map of the optic tectum (OT).
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Affiliation(s)
- Gianmarco Maldarelli
- Chair of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan 85354, Germany
| | - Uwe Firzlaff
- Chair of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan 85354, Germany
| | - Lutz Kettler
- Chair of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan 85354, Germany
| | - Janie M Ondracek
- Chair of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan 85354, Germany
| | - Harald Luksch
- Chair of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan 85354, Germany
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Si Y, Ito S, Litke AM, Feldheim DA. High-Frequency Hearing Is Required to Compute a Topographic Map of Auditory Space in the Mouse Superior Colliculus. eNeuro 2022; 9:ENEURO.0513-21.2022. [PMID: 35473764 PMCID: PMC9116932 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0513-21.2022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2021] [Revised: 04/01/2022] [Accepted: 04/09/2022] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
A topographic map of auditory space is a feature found in the superior colliculus (SC) of many species, including CBA/CaJ mice. In this genetic background, high-frequency monaural spectral cues and interaural level differences (ILDs) are used to compute spatial receptive fields (RFs) that form a topographic map along the azimuth. Unfortunately, C57BL/6 mice, a strain widely used for transgenic manipulation, display age-related hearing loss (AHL) because of an inbred mutation in the Cadherin 23 gene (Cdh23) that affects hair cell mechanotransduction. To overcome this problem, researchers have used young C57BL/6 mice in their studies, as they have been shown to have normal hearing thresholds. However, important details of the auditory response characteristics of the SC such as spectral responses and spatial localization, have not been characterized in young C57BL/6 mice. Here, we show that two- to four-month C57BL/6 mice lack neurons with frontal auditory RFs and therefore lack a topographic representation of auditory space in the SC. Analysis of the spectrotemporal RFs (STRFs) of the SC auditory neurons shows that C57BL/6 mouse SC neurons lack the ability to detect the high-frequency (>40 kHz) spectral cues that are needed to compute frontal RFs. We also show that crossing C57BL/6 mice with CBA/CaJ mice or introducing one copy of the wild-type Cdh23 to C57BL/6 mice rescues the high-frequency hearing deficit and improves the topographic map of auditory space. Taken together, these results demonstrate the importance of high-frequency hearing in computing a topographic map of auditory space.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yufei Si
- The Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
| | - Shinya Ito
- Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
- MindScope Program, Allen Institute, Seattle, WA 98109
| | - Alan M Litke
- Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
| | - David A Feldheim
- The Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
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Tsai NY, Wang F, Toma K, Yin C, Takatoh J, Pai EL, Wu K, Matcham AC, Yin L, Dang EJ, Marciano DK, Rubenstein JL, Wang F, Ullian EM, Duan X. Trans-Seq maps a selective mammalian retinotectal synapse instructed by Nephronectin. Nat Neurosci 2022; 25:659-674. [PMID: 35524141 PMCID: PMC9172271 DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01068-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2021] [Accepted: 03/30/2022] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
The mouse visual system serves as an accessible model to understand mammalian circuit wiring. Despite rich knowledge in retinal circuits, the long-range connectivity map from distinct retinal ganglion cell (RGC) types to diverse brain neuron types remains unknown. In this study, we developed an integrated approach, called Trans-Seq, to map RGCs to superior collicular (SC) circuits. Trans-Seq combines a fluorescent anterograde trans-synaptic tracer, consisting of codon-optimized wheat germ agglutinin fused to mCherry, with single-cell RNA sequencing. We used Trans-Seq to classify SC neuron types innervated by genetically defined RGC types and predicted a neuronal pair from αRGCs to Nephronectin-positive wide-field neurons (NPWFs). We validated this connection using genetic labeling, electrophysiology and retrograde tracing. We then used transcriptomic data from Trans-Seq to identify Nephronectin as a determinant for selective synaptic choice from αRGC to NPWFs via binding to Integrin α8β1. The Trans-Seq approach can be broadly applied for post-synaptic circuit discovery from genetically defined pre-synaptic neurons.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicole Y Tsai
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Medical Scientist Training Program and Biomedical Science Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Fei Wang
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Kenichi Toma
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Chen Yin
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Jun Takatoh
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Emily L Pai
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Kongyan Wu
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Angela C Matcham
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Luping Yin
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Eric J Dang
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Denise K Marciano
- Departments of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA
| | - John L Rubenstein
- Neuroscience Graduate Program, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Fan Wang
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Erik M Ullian
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Xin Duan
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
- Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
- Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
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Vidal M, Vitu F. Multisensory temporal binding induces an illusory gap/overlap that reduces the expected audiovisual interactions on saccades but not manual responses. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0266468. [PMID: 35390067 PMCID: PMC8989229 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266468] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2021] [Accepted: 03/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Throughout the day, humans react to multisensory events conveying both visual and auditory signals by rapidly reorienting their gaze. Several studies showed that sounds can impact the latency of visually guided saccades depending on when and where they are delivered. We found that unlocalized beeps delivered near the onset time of a visual target reduce latencies, more for early beeps and less for late beeps, however, this modulation is far weaker than for perceptual temporal judgments. Here we tested our previous assumption that beeps shift the perceived timing of target onset and result in two competing effects on saccade latencies: a multisensory modulation in line with the expected perceptual effect and an illusory gap/overlap effect, resulting from target appearance being perceived later/closer in time than fixation offset and shortening/lengthening saccade latencies. Gap/overlap effects involve an oculomotor component associated with neuronal activity in the superior colliculus (SC), a multisensory subcortical structure devoted to sensory-motor transformation. We therefore predicted that the interfering illusory gap/overlap effect would be weaker for manual responses, which involve distinct multisensory areas. In three experiments we manipulated the delay between target onset and an irrelevant auditory beep (stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA) and between target onset and fixation offset (real gap/overlap). Targets appeared left/right of fixation and participants were instructed to make quick saccades or button presses towards the targets. Adding a real overlap/gap (50% of SOA) compensated for the illusory gap/overlap by increasing the beep-related modulation of saccade latencies across the entire SOA range, whereas it barely affected manual responses. However, although auditory and gap/overlap effects modulated saccade latencies in similar ways, these were additive and could saturate, suggesting that they reflect independent mechanisms. Therefore, multisensory temporal binding affects perception and oculomotor control differently, likely due to the implication of the SC in saccade programming and multisensory integration.
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Affiliation(s)
- Manuel Vidal
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR 7289, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, France
- Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, UMR 7290, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, France
- * E-mail:
| | - Françoise Vitu
- Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, UMR 7290, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, France
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Abstract
The superior colliculus (SC) integrates visual and other sensory information to regulate critical reflexive and innate behaviors, such as prey capture. In the mouse, the vast majority of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) innervate the SC, including inputs from both the contralateral (contra-RGCs) and ipsilateral (ipsi-RGCs) eye. Despite this, previous studies revealed minimal neuronal responses to ipsilateral stimulation and few binocular interactions in the mouse SC. More recent work suggests that ipsi-RGC function and innervation of the SC are critical for efficient prey capture, raising the possibility that binocular interactions in the mouse SC may be more prevalent than previously thought. To explore this possibility, we investigated eye-specific and binocular influences on visual responses and tuning of SC neurons, focusing on the anteromedial region. Although the majority of SC neurons were primarily driven by contralateral eye stimulation, we observed that a substantial proportion of units were influenced or driven by ipsilateral stimulation. Clustering based on differential responses to eye-specific stimulus presentation revealed five distinct putative subpopulations and multiple modes of binocular interaction, including facilitation, summation, and suppression. Each of the putative subpopulations exhibited selectivity for orientation, and differences in spatial frequency tuning and spatial summation properties were observed between subpopulations. Further analysis of orientation tuning under different ocular conditions supported differential modes of binocular interaction between putative subtypes. Taken together, these data suggest that binocular interactions in the mouse SC may be more prevalent and diverse than previously understood.NEW & NOTEWORTHY The mouse superior colliculus (SC) receives binocular inputs, which inform complex behavioral programs. However, we know surprisingly little about binocular tuning in the rodent SC. Here, we characterize responses to eye-specific presentations of visual stimuli and reveal a previously unappreciated diversity of binocularly modulated neurons in the SC. This foundational work broadens our understanding of visual processing in the SC and sets the stage for future studies interrogating the circuit mechanisms underlying binocular tuning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ashley L Russell
- Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Research Institute, Washington, District of Columbia
| | - Karen G Dixon
- Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Research Institute, Washington, District of Columbia
| | - Jason W Triplett
- Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Research Institute, Washington, District of Columbia
- Department of Pediatrics, The George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, District of Columbia
- Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, District of Columbia
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Abstract
Covert visual attention is accomplished by a cascade of mechanisms distributed across multiple brain regions. Visual cortex is associated with enhanced representations of relevant stimulus features, whereas the contributions of subcortical circuits are less well understood but have been associated with selection of relevant spatial locations and suppression of distracting stimuli. As a step toward understanding these subcortical circuits, here we identified how neuronal activity in the intermediate layers of the superior colliculus (SC) of head-fixed mice is modulated during covert visual attention. We found that spatial cues modulated both firing rate and spike-count correlations. Crucially, the cue-related modulation in firing rate was due to enhancement of activity at the cued spatial location rather than suppression at the uncued location, indicating that SC neurons in our task were modulated by an excitatory or disinhibitory circuit mechanism focused on the relevant location, rather than broad inhibition of irrelevant locations. This modulation improved the neuronal discriminability of visual-change-evoked activity, but only when assessed for neuronal activity between the contralateral and ipsilateral SC. Together, our findings indicate that neurons in the mouse SC can contribute to covert visual selective attention by biasing processing in favor of locations expected to contain task-relevant information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lupeng Wang
- Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA.
| | - James P Herman
- Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA
| | - Richard J Krauzlis
- Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA.
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Kasai M, Isa T. Effects of Light Isoflurane Anesthesia on Organization of Direction and Orientation Selectivity in the Superficial Layer of the Mouse Superior Colliculus. J Neurosci 2022; 42:619-630. [PMID: 34872926 PMCID: PMC8805619 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1196-21.2021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2021] [Revised: 11/18/2021] [Accepted: 11/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The superior colliculus (SC) is the midbrain center for integrating visual and multimodal sensory information. Neurons in the SC exhibit direction and orientation selectivity. Recent studies reported that neurons with similar preferences formed clusters in the mouse SC (Ahmadlou and Heimel, 2015; Feinberg and Meister, 2015; de Malmazet et al., 2018; Li et al., 2020). However, it remains controversial as to how these clusters are organized within the SC (Inayat et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2021). Here, we found that different brain states (i.e., awake or anesthetized with isoflurane) changed the selectivity of individual SC neurons and organizations of the neuronal population in both male and female mice. Using two-photon Ca2+ imaging, we examined both individual neuronal responses and the spatial patterns of their population responses. Under isoflurane anesthesia, orientation selectivity increased and a larger number of orientation-selective cells were observed when compared with the awake condition, whereas the proportions of direction-selective cells were similar in both conditions. Furthermore, direction- and orientation-selective cells located at closer positions showed more similar preferences, and cluster-like spatial patterns were enhanced. Inhibitory responses of direction-selective neurons were also reduced under isoflurane anesthesia. Thus, the changes in the spatial organization of response patterns were considered to be because of changes in the balance of excitation and inhibition, with excitation dominance, in the local circuits. These results provide new insights into the possibility that the functional organization of feature selectivity in the brain is affected by brain state.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Recent large-scale recording studies are changing our view of visual maps in the superior colliculus (SC), including findings of cluster-like localizations of direction- and orientation-selective neurons. However, results from several laboratories are conflicting regarding the presence of cluster-like organization. Here, we demonstrated that light isoflurane anesthesia affected the direction- and orientation-tuning properties in the mouse superficial SC and that their cluster-like localization pattern was enhanced by the anesthesia. Furthermore, the effect of anesthesia on direction selectivity appeared to be different in the excitatory and inhibitory populations in the SC. Our results suggest that the functional organization of direction and orientation selectivity might be regulated by the excitation-inhibition balance that depends on the brain state.
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Affiliation(s)
- Masatoshi Kasai
- Department of Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
| | - Tadashi Isa
- Department of Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
- Human Brain Research Center, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
- Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Biology (WPI-ASHBi), Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
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Abstract
Bulk loading of neurons with fluorescent calcium indicators in transparent albino Xenopus tadpoles offers a rapid and easy method for tracking sensory-evoked activity in large numbers of neurons within an awake developing brain circuit. In vivo two-photon time-lapse imaging of an image plane through the optic tectum allows defining receptive field properties from visual-evoked responses for studies of single-neuron and network-level encoding and plasticity. Here, we describe loading the Xenopus tadpole optic tectum with the membrane-permeable AM ester of Oregon Green 488 BAPTA-1 (OGB-1 AM) for in vivo imaging experiments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter W Hogg
- Cellular and Physiological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T2B5, Canada
| | - Kurt Haas
- Cellular and Physiological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T2B5, Canada
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Kirchgessner MA, Franklin AD, Callaway EM. Distinct "driving" versus "modulatory" influences of different visual corticothalamic pathways. Curr Biol 2021; 31:5121-5137.e7. [PMID: 34614389 PMCID: PMC8665059 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.09.025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2021] [Revised: 07/25/2021] [Accepted: 09/08/2021] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
Higher-order (HO) thalamic nuclei interact extensively and reciprocally with the cerebral cortex. These corticothalamic (CT) interactions are thought to be important for sensation and perception, attention, and many other important brain functions. CT projections to HO thalamic nuclei, such as the visual pulvinar, originate from two different excitatory populations in cortical layers 5 and 6, whereas first-order nuclei (such as the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus; dLGN) only receive layer 6 CT input. It has been proposed that these layer 5 and layer 6 CT pathways have different functional influences on the HO thalamus, but this has never been directly tested. By optogenetically inactivating different CT populations in the primary visual cortex (V1) and recording single-unit activity from V1, dLGN, and pulvinar of awake mice, we demonstrate that layer 5, but not layer 6, CT projections drive visual responses in the pulvinar, even while both pathways provide retinotopic, baseline excitation to their thalamic targets. Inactivating the superior colliculus also suppressed visual responses in the same subregion of the pulvinar, demonstrating that cortical layer 5 and subcortical inputs both contribute to HO visual thalamic activity-even at the level of putative single neurons. Altogether, these results indicate a functional division of "driver" and "modulator" CT pathways from V1 to the visual thalamus in vivo.
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Affiliation(s)
- Megan A Kirchgessner
- Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA; Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
| | - Alexis D Franklin
- Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Edward M Callaway
- Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA; Neurosciences Graduate Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
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