Stimulus-driven visual attention in mice

Abstract

In primates, stimulus-driven changes in visual attention can facilitate or hinder perceptual performance, depending on the location and timing of the stimulus event. Mice have emerged as a powerful model for studying visual circuits and behavior; however, it is unclear whether mice show similar interactions between stimulus events and visual attention during perceptual decisions. To investigate this, we trained head-fixed mice to detect a near-threshold change in visual orientation and tested how performance was altered by task-irrelevant stimuli that occurred at different times and locations with respect to the orientation change. We found that task-irrelevant stimuli strongly affected mouse performance. Specifically, stimulus-driven attention in mice followed a similar time course as that in other species: The decreases in reaction times fully emerged between 250 and 400 ms after the stimulus event, and detection accuracy was not affected. However, the effects of stimulus-driven attention on behavior in mice were insensitive to stimulus-event location, an aspect different from what is known in primates. In contrast, reaction times in mice were reduced at longer delays after the task-irrelevant stimulus event regardless of its spatial congruence to the target. These results highlight the strengths and limitations of using mice as a model for studying higher-order visual functions.

Exogenous and endogenous spatial attention in crows

“…The demonstration of an IOR in animal subjects is generally variable. While IOR was demonstrated in studies with macaques ( 5 ), archerfish ( 31 ), and one of the two tested barn owls ( 35 ), no IOR was found in studies with rats ( 36 ), mice ( 37 ), or pigeons ( 38 ). The significance of the IOR, which is present even in a predictive cue task protocol in archerfish ( 23 ), as a signature of exogenous attention remains unclear.…”

Costs and benefits of voluntary attention in crows

“…Most animal studies of cueing effects do not include a neutral cue presentation [5,6,11,18,[27][28][29]. Several studies used a no-cue control instead, where the target appears without previous cueing [7,8,24,25]. However, a no-cue design does not account for the alerting effect of visual cues and may thus overestimate the effects of attention allocation [26].…”

Probing visual sensitivity and attention in mice using reverse correlation

“…A small set of studies have used explicit cues to direct a mouse's attention and observe its underlying neural correlates 17,[19][20][21] . This classical design allowed them to make the spatial cue either valid or invalid and confirm that mice, like primates, experience increased stimulus detection and faster reaction times with cued attention 19 .…”

“…There are now a few tasks to measure attention in mice [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . Several use implicit methods to direct the locus of spatial attention 16,23,45 .…”

“…Our understanding of how rodents allocate attentional resources to shape behavior, however, is still limited. A set of recent studies suggest that mice can allocate voluntary (endogenous) attention in response to a cue and can switch its spatial location between visual hemifields [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . Simultaneous behavioral measurements and neural recordings in mice 16,20,23 are beginning to identify brain regions involved in attention and resemble some findings from the classical primate literature 1 .…”