Decisions to act while pursuing goals in the presence of danger must be made quickly but safely. Premature decisions risk injury or death whereas postponing decisions risk goal loss.Here we show how mice resolve these competing demands. Using microstructural behavioral analyses, we identified the spatiotemporal dynamics of approach-avoidance decisions under motivational conflict in male mice. Then we used cognitive modelling to show that these dynamics reflect the speeded decision-making mechanisms used by humans and non-human primates, with mice trading off decision speed for safety of choice when danger loomed. Using calcium imaging in paraventricular thalamus and optogenetic inhibition of the prelimbic cortex to paraventricular thalamus pathway, we show that this speed-safety trade off occurs because increases in paraventricular thalamus activity increase decision caution, thereby increasing approach-avoid decision times in the presence of danger. Our findings demonstrate that a discrete brain circuit involving the paraventricular thalamus and its prefrontal input adjusts decision caution during motivational conflict, trading off decision speed for decision safety when danger is close. We identify the corticothalamic pathway as central to cognitive control during decision-making under conflict.

Object detection is an essential function of the visual system. Although the visual cortex plays an important role in object detection, the superior colliculus can support detection when the visual cortex is ablated or silenced. Moreover, it has been shown that superficial layers of mouse SC (sSC) encode visual features of complex objects, and that this code is not inherited from the primary visual cortex. This suggests that mouse sSC may provide a significant contribution to complex object vision. Here, we use optogenetics to show that mouse sSC is causally involved in figure detection based on differences in figure contrast, orientation and phase. Additionally, our neural recordings show that in mouse sSC, image elements that belong to a figure elicit stronger activity than those same elements when they are part of the background. The discriminability of this neural code is higher for correct trials than incorrect trials. Our results provide new insight into the behavioral relevance of the visual processing that takes place in sSC.