Three-dimensional carbon nanotube frameworks favor spinal cord explant rewiring of motor outputs.

SummaryDespite their growing popularity as models of visual functions, it remains unclear whether rodents are capable of deploying advanced shape-processing strategies when engaged in visual object recognition. In rats, for instance, pattern vision has been reported to range from mere detection of overall object luminance to view-invariant processing of discriminative shape features. Here we sought to clarify how refined object vision is in rodents, and how variable the complexity of their visual processing strategy is across individuals. To this aim, we measured how well rats could discriminate a reference object from 11 distractors, which spanned a spectrum of image-level similarity to the reference. We also presented the animals with random variations of the reference, and processed their responses to these stimuli to derive subject-specific models of rat perceptual choices. Our models successfully captured the highly variable discrimination performance observed across subjects and object conditions. In particular, they revealed that the animals that succeeded with the most challenging distractors were those that integrated the wider variety of discriminative features into their perceptual strategies. Critically, these strategies were largely preserved when the rats were required to discriminate outlined and scaled versions of the stimuli, thus showing that rat object vision can be characterized as a transformation-tolerant, feature-based filtering process. Overall, these findings indicate that rats are capable of advanced processing of shape information, and point to the rodents as powerful models for investigating the neuronal underpinnings of visual object recognition and other high-level visual functions.

In recent years, a number of studies have explored the possible use of rats as models of high-level visual functions. One central question at the root of such an investigation is to understand whether rat object vision relies on the processing of visual shape features or, rather, on lower-order image properties (e.g., overall brightness). In a recent study, we have shown that rats are capable of extracting multiple features of an object that are diagnostic of its identity, at least when those features are, structure-wise, distinct enough to be parsed by the rat visual system. In the present study, we have assessed the impact of object structure on rat perceptual strategy. We trained rats to discriminate between two structurally similar objects, and compared their recognition strategies with those reported in our previous study. We found that, under conditions of lower stimulus discriminability, rat visual discrimination strategy becomes more view-dependent and subject-dependent. Rats were still able to recognize the target objects, in a way that was largely tolerant (i.e., invariant) to object transformation; however, the larger structural and pixel-wise similarity affected the way objects were processed. Compared to the findings of our previous study, the patterns of diagnostic features were: (i) smaller and more scattered; (ii) only partially preserved across object views; and (iii) only partially reproducible across rats. On the other hand, rats were still found to adopt a multi-featural processing strategy and to make use of part of the optimal discriminatory information afforded by the two objects. Our findings suggest that, as in humans, rat invariant recognition can flexibly rely on either view-invariant representations of distinctive object features or view-specific object representations, acquired through learning.

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Guidance molecules, such as Sema3A or Netrin-1, induce growth cone (GC) repulsion or attraction. In order to determine the speed of action and efficiency of these guidance cues we developed an experimental procedure to deliver controlled amounts of these molecules. Lipid vesicles encapsulating 10–104 molecules of Sema3A or Netrin-1 were manipulated with high spatial and temporal resolution by optical tweezers and their photolysis triggered by laser pulses. Guidance molecules released from the vesicles diffused and reached the GC membrane in a few seconds. Following their arrival, GCs retracted or grew in 20–120 s. By determining the number of guidance molecules trapped inside vesicles and estimating the fraction of guidance molecules reaching the GC, we show that the arrival of less than 5 Netrin-1 molecules on the GC membrane is sufficient to induce growth. In contrast, the arrival of about 200 Sema3A molecules is necessary to induce filopodia repulsion.