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Zooming in on mouse vision

Nature Neuroscience volume 13, pages 1045–1046 (2010)Cite this article

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An examination of the micro-organization of visual cortex using two-photon calcium imaging provides a new level of insight into retinotopic maps, finding that retinotopy is scrambled on fine scales in mouse primary visual cortex.

One fundamental principle of many sensory systems is that they are highly organized. The mammalian retina, for example, has a smooth representation of visual position that is achieved by intricate mosaic tiling of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). Many types of RGCs independently cover the full visual field. For example, distinct RGC types respond to bright spots versus dark spots. Given such orderly input, one might expect that cells in the primary visual cortex (V1) would follow suit and organize into a smooth continuous retinotopic map that corresponds one-to-one with retinal location. Indeed, at the macroscopic level, there is evidence for such a retinotopic organization. On the other hand, V1 combines inputs from these different RGC classes to represent new features that may supersede retinotopy. Micro-organization of V1 has previously been examined laboriously using electrodes. But with few cells recorded simultaneously and no way of gauging the distance between cells, unequivocal evidence regarding the micro-organization of retinotopic maps in V1 has been unavailable until now.

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Figure 1: The mouse visual system is substantially different from those of cats and macaques.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yevgeniy B. Sirotin is at the Shelby White and Leon Levy Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA.,

    Yevgeniy B Sirotin

  2. Aniruddha Das is in the Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.,

    Aniruddha Das

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  1. Yevgeniy B Sirotin
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  2. Aniruddha Das
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Correspondence to Yevgeniy B Sirotin.

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Sirotin, Y., Das, A. Zooming in on mouse vision. Nat Neurosci 13, 1045–1046 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0910-1045

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