Bidirectional encoding of motion contrast in the mouse superior colliculus

• DOI: 10.7554/elife.35261
• Publication Date: 2018-07-02T12:08:29Z
• Authors: Jad Barchini; Xuefeng Shi; Hui Chen; Jianhua Cang
• Keywords: Superior colliculus; Stimulus (psychology); Surround suppression

Detection of salient objects in the visual scene is a vital aspect an animal’s interactions with its environment. Here, we show that neurons mouse superior colliculus (SC) encode saliency by detecting motion contrast between stimulus center and surround. Excitatory most superficial lamina SC are contextually modulated, monotonically increasing their response from suppression same-direction surround to maximal potentiation oppositely-moving The degree this declines depth SC. Inhibitory suppressed any at all depths. These modulations both neuronal populations much more prominent direction than phase, temporal frequency, or static orientation contrast, suggesting feature-specific encoding Together, our findings provide evidence supporting locally generated feature representations SC, lay foundations towards mechanistic evolutionary understanding emergence.