Editorial: What can simple brains teach us about how vision works

Zoccolan, Davide; Cox, David D.; Benucci, Andrea

doi:10.3389/fncir.2015.00051

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…With the availability of unique experimental toolboxes, the mouse is currently the animal model of choice for the dissection of neural circuits (Abbott et al, 2020; Luo et al, 2018; Madisen et al, 2015). However, although visual behaviors elicited by low-level visual features have been well characterized (Huberman and Niell, 2011; Zoccolan et al, 2015), intermediate (e.g. textures) and high-level vision (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic discrimination of relative stimulus features in mice

Lyamzin

Aoki

Abdolrahmani

et al. 2020

Preprint

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SummaryUnderstanding how the brain computes choice from sensory information is a central question of perceptual decision-making. Relevant behavioral tasks condition choice on abstract or invariant properties of the stimuli, thus decoupling stimulus-specific information from the decision variable. Among visual tasks, orientation discrimination is a gold standard; however, it is not clear if a mouse – a recently popular animal model in visual decision-making research – can learn an invariant orientation discrimination task and what choice strategies it would use.Here we show that mice can solve a discrimination task where choices are decoupled from the orientation of individual stimuli, depending instead on a measure of relative orientation. Mice learned this task, reaching an upper bound for discrimination acuity of 6 degrees and relying on decisionmaking strategies that balanced cognitive resources with history-dependent biases.We analyzed behavioral data from n=40 animals with the help of a novel probabilistic choice model that we used to interpret individual biases and behavioral strategies. The model explained variation in performance with task difficulty and identified unreported dimensions of variation associated with the circularity of the stimulus space. Furthermore, it showed a larger effect of history biases on animals’ choices during periods of lower engagement.Our results demonstrate that mice can learn invariant perceptual representations by combining decision-relevant stimulus information decoupled from low-level visual features, with the computation of the decision variable dependent on the cognitive state.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic discrimination of relative stimulus features in mice

Lyamzin

Aoki

Abdolrahmani

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…By any explanation, we believe that the finding of endogenously generated facilitation has two major aspects: using the most widely accepted task (Posner's endogenous cuing paradigm) for studying volitional orienting in humans, this is a demonstration of purely endogenous orienting in a nonprimate species; and in addition to the major methodological and conceptual differences between previous studies and our task (reviewed in the Introduction), there are phylogenetical differences between lower vertebrates (e.g., fish) and higher ones (e.g., birds) (52)(53)(54). From an evolutionary perspective, the more than 200 million-year phylogenetic distance that separates fish from other vertebrates (e.g., humans, monkeys, and even pigeons) presents an invaluable opportunity for a comparative investigation of brain and cognition development during evolution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endogenous orienting in the archer fish

Saban

Sekely

Klein

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The literature has long emphasized the neocortex's role in volitional processes. In this work, we examined endogenous orienting in an evolutionarily older species, the archer fish, which lacks neocortexlike cells. We used Posner's classic endogenous cuing task, in which a centrally presented, spatially informative cue is followed by a target. The fish responded to the target by shooting a stream of water at it. Interestingly, the fish demonstrated a human-like "volitional" facilitation effect: their reaction times to targets that appeared on the side indicated by the precue were faster than their reaction times to targets on the opposite side. The fish also exhibited inhibition of return, an aftermath of orienting that commonly emerges only in reflexive orienting tasks in human participants. We believe that this pattern demonstrates the acquisition of an arbitrary connection between spatial orienting and a nonspatial feature of a centrally presented stimulus in nonprimate species. In the literature on human attention, orienting in response to such contingencies has been strongly associated with volitional control. We discuss the implications of these results for the evolution of orienting, and for the study of volitional processes in all species, including humans.volitional orienting | subcortical regions | endogenous orienting | IOR | attention H umans are commonly assumed to have volitional abilities that species lacking a neocortex (e.g., fish and amphibians) do not have. The literature has long emphasized the role of cortical mechanisms in these exclusive cognitive abilities. But is a neocortex necessary for a species to manifest behaviors that have been attributed to volitional control? To examine this question, we tested whether the archer fish (Toxotes chatareus) is capable of endogenous orienting.Driven by bottom-up stimulation, reflexive orienting is fast and automatic as a result of tuning through natural selection. Volitional orienting is relatively nonreflexive and is tuned to local contingencies and/or the immediate goals of the individual (1). In the current study, we adopt the typical perspective regarding spatial attention, as put forward by Posner (2), which is characterized by two distinctions: whether covert or overt adjustments are made, and whether these adjustments are under endogenous (volitional) or exogenous (reflexive) control. The most common methods for examining reflexive and volitional attentional processes are two versions of Posner's cuing task (2, 3). In this task, participants are presented with a cue followed by a peripheral target to which they are instructed to respond. Two task properties are important for determining which mode of orienting is generated. The first is whether or not the cue is informative about the location of the upcoming target, and the second is whether or not the input pathway of the upcoming target might be stimulated by the cue. When studying reflexive orienting, the peripheral location where a target might appear, or one nearby, is stimulated by a cue...

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“…Finally, finding the effect in rodents would have offered some additional advantages. It has been suggested that smaller brains may actually be preferable to study basic mechanisms due to their reduced complexity (Zoccolan et al, 2015). Additionally, rodents have been the preferred species in recent studies of the underlying neural computations of orientation preference (Varela et al, 1997; Felsen et al, 2002; Ghodrati et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unsupervised Temporal Contiguity Experience Does Not Break the Invariance of Orientation Selectivity Across Spatial Frequency

Crijns

Kaliukhovich

Vankelecom

et al. 2019

Front. Syst. Neurosci.

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The images projected onto the retina can vary widely for a single object. Despite these transformations primates can quickly and reliably recognize objects. At the neural level, transformation tolerance in monkey inferotemporal cortex is affected by the temporal contiguity statistics of the visual input. Here we investigated whether temporal contiguity learning also influences the basic feature detectors in lower levels of the visual hierarchy, in particular the independent coding of orientation and spatial frequency (SF) in primary visual cortex. Eight male Long Evans rats were repeatedly exposed to a temporal transition between two gratings that changed in SF and had either the same (control SF) or a different (swap SF) orientation. Electrophysiological evidence showed that the responses of single neurons during this exposure were sensitive to the change in orientation. Nevertheless, the tolerance of orientation selectivity for changes in SF was unaffected by the temporal contiguity manipulation, as observed in 239 single neurons isolated pre-exposure and 234 post-exposure. Temporal contiguity learning did not affect orientation selectivity in V1. The basic filter mechanisms that characterize V1 processing seem unaffected by temporal contiguity manipulations.

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Editorial: What can simple brains teach us about how vision works

Cited by 8 publications

References 31 publications

Probabilistic discrimination of relative stimulus features in mice

Probabilistic discrimination of relative stimulus features in mice

Endogenous orienting in the archer fish

Unsupervised Temporal Contiguity Experience Does Not Break the Invariance of Orientation Selectivity Across Spatial Frequency

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