A horizontally oriented inhibitory neuron (yellow) spans the mediolateral axis of the superficial superior colliculus, with dense axonal arborization suggestive of a role in collicular surround suppression. Retinal ganglion cell terminals expressing ChR2 are shown in cyan (following intraocular AAV injection), while magenta highlights VGAT+ neurons labeled via a reporter AAV-tdTomato in a VGAT-Cre mouse. Image credit Dr. Peng Cui

#Visual #salience generation involves center-surround dynamics, but what performs these computations? This study shows that the #SuperiorColliculus encodes center-surround dynamics under isolated conditions, and provides insights into the circuit implementation @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4n7RpsA

A horizontally oriented inhibitory neuron (yellow) spans the mediolateral axis of the superficial superior colliculus, with dense axonal arborization suggestive of a role in collicular surround suppression. Retinal ganglion cell terminals expressing ChR2 are shown in cyan (following intraocular AAV injection), while magenta highlights VGAT+ neurons labeled via a reporter AAV-tdTomato in a VGAT-Cre mouse. Image credit Dr. Peng Cui

#Visual #salience generation involves center-surround dynamics, but what performs these computations? This study shows that the #SuperiorColliculus encodes center-surround dynamics under isolated conditions, and provides insights into the circuit implementation @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4n7RpsA

A horizontally oriented inhibitory neuron (yellow) spans the mediolateral axis of the superficial superior colliculus, with dense axonal arborization suggestive of a role in collicular surround suppression. Retinal ganglion cell terminals expressing ChR2 are shown in cyan (following intraocular AAV injection), while magenta highlights VGAT+ neurons labeled via a reporter AAV-tdTomato in a VGAT-Cre mouse. Image credit Dr. Peng Cui

#Visual #salience generation involves center-surround dynamics, but what performs these computations? This study shows that the #SuperiorColliculus encodes center-surround dynamics under isolated conditions, and provides insights into the circuit implementation @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4n7RpsA

Testing for trans-saccadic prediction error signaling by foveal SC neurons. Top: Monkeys generated a delayed, visually-guided saccade towards an extrafoveal target. The authors used a delayed paradigm to make sure that there was a stable visual image upon saccade generation. In some trials, the saccade target was unchanged throughout the whole trial (high spatial frequency grating embedded within a circular patch for this shown example). In other trials, they detected saccade onset and immediately flipped the saccade target to another feature (from a low to a high spatial frequency texture in the shown example). Bottom: The authors only selected foveal SC neurons with response fields (RF’s) not extending towards the pre-saccadic extrafoveal stimulus location. In this example, the RF was almost entirely contained within <2 deg eccentricity. Each black dot is a stimulus onset location during RF mapping, and the white circle (3 deg radius) shows the extent of the saccade target if it was perfectly foveated post-saccadically. The target covered the RF post-saccadically but not pre-saccadically. The z-axis indicates the visual response strength of the neuron at each stimulus location.

Why don't #saccades disrupt our continuous #visual experience? This study shows that neurons of the #SuperiorColliculus are sensitive to the pre-movement peripheral appearance of the eye movement targets, potentially explaining the experienced perceptual stability @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/44cxQIe

Testing for trans-saccadic prediction error signaling by foveal SC neurons. Top: Monkeys generated a delayed, visually-guided saccade towards an extrafoveal target. The authors used a delayed paradigm to make sure that there was a stable visual image upon saccade generation. In some trials, the saccade target was unchanged throughout the whole trial (high spatial frequency grating embedded within a circular patch for this shown example). In other trials, they detected saccade onset and immediately flipped the saccade target to another feature (from a low to a high spatial frequency texture in the shown example). Bottom: The authors only selected foveal SC neurons with response fields (RF’s) not extending towards the pre-saccadic extrafoveal stimulus location. In this example, the RF was almost entirely contained within <2 deg eccentricity. Each black dot is a stimulus onset location during RF mapping, and the white circle (3 deg radius) shows the extent of the saccade target if it was perfectly foveated post-saccadically. The target covered the RF post-saccadically but not pre-saccadically. The z-axis indicates the visual response strength of the neuron at each stimulus location.

Why don't #saccades disrupt our continuous #visual experience? This study shows that neurons of the #SuperiorColliculus are sensitive to the pre-movement peripheral appearance of the eye movement targets, potentially explaining the experienced perceptual stability @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/44cxQIe

Testing for trans-saccadic prediction error signaling by foveal SC neurons. Top: Monkeys generated a delayed, visually-guided saccade towards an extrafoveal target. The authors used a delayed paradigm to make sure that there was a stable visual image upon saccade generation. In some trials, the saccade target was unchanged throughout the whole trial (high spatial frequency grating embedded within a circular patch for this shown example). In other trials, they detected saccade onset and immediately flipped the saccade target to another feature (from a low to a high spatial frequency texture in the shown example). Bottom: The authors only selected foveal SC neurons with response fields (RF’s) not extending towards the pre-saccadic extrafoveal stimulus location. In this example, the RF was almost entirely contained within <2 deg eccentricity. Each black dot is a stimulus onset location during RF mapping, and the white circle (3 deg radius) shows the extent of the saccade target if it was perfectly foveated post-saccadically. The target covered the RF post-saccadically but not pre-saccadically. The z-axis indicates the visual response strength of the neuron at each stimulus location.

Why don't #saccades disrupt our continuous #visual experience? This study shows that neurons of the #SuperiorColliculus are sensitive to the pre-movement peripheral appearance of the eye movement targets, potentially explaining the experienced perceptual stability @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/44cxQIe

📢New paper alert: "Binocular processing facilitates escape behavior through multiple pathways to the superior colliculus" is now published in Current Biology: authors.elsevier.com/c/1keMC3QW8S... (1/7)

#Neuroscience #VisionResearch #SurvivalMechanisms #BinocularVision #SuperiorColliculus

A collicular visual cortex: Neocortical space for an ancient midbrain visual structure http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6422/64 "Another primary visual cortex"; #superiorcolliculus #SC #V1; "Whether some aspect of #blindsight depends on the impact of SC on visual cortex...