Superior colliculus articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Value-based decision making involves choosing from multiple options with different values. The authors identify a neural mechanism that directly transforms absolute values to categorical choices within the superior colliculus and which supports value-based decision making critical for real-world economic behaviours.

    • Beizhen Zhang
    • , Janis Ying Ying Kan
    •  & Michael Christopher Dorris

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microsaccades are small-amplitude, fixational eye movements that are largely thought to be involuntary. Here, the authors demonstrate that monkeys (and humans) can be easily trained to respond to a remembered target location with a volitional microsaccade, and that a population of superior colliculus neurons is selectively associated with them.

    • Konstantin F. Willeke
    • , Xiaoguang Tian
    •  & Ziad M. Hafed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In primates, the superior colliculus (SC) contributes to rapid visual exploration with saccades. Here the authors show that the superior colliculus preferentially represents low spatial frequencies, which are the most prevalent in natural scenes.

    • Chih-Yang Chen
    • , Lukas Sonnenberg
    •  & Ziad M. Hafed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Saliency maps have been proposed to guide visual attention, yet the underlying neural correlates remain undetermined. Here, the authors record from monkeys as they watch videos of natural scenes, and find superior colliculus superficial visual-layer neurons exhibit activity patterns consistent with a visual saliency map.

    • Brian J. White
    • , David J. Berg
    •  & Douglas P. Munoz

  • Article |

    Failure to attend to visual cues is a common consequence of visual cortical injury. Here, the authors demonstrate that auditory–visual cross-modal behavioural training leads to neural plasticity and reinstatement of visuomotor competency in animals rendered unilaterally blind by visual cortical removal.

    • Huai Jiang
    • , Barry E. Stein
    •  & John G. McHaffie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ability of animals to respond to life-threatening stimuli is critical for survival, yet the neural circuits mediating innate defensive behaviors are not well understood. Here, the authors reveal a novel collicular–thalamic–amygdala circuit critical for innate defensive responses to visual threats.

    • Pengfei Wei
    • , Nan Liu
    •  & Liping Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mammalian superior colliculus (SC) processes visual stimuli but little is known about the spatial organization of the response preferences for specific visual features. Here the authors show that the mouse SC contains a map for orientation preference such that preferred grating orientation is aligned to concentric circles around the centre of the visual field.

    • Mehran Ahmadlou
    •  & J Alexander Heimel

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