Abstract

Most of what we know on primary visual cortex (V1) comes from experiments performed under anesthesia. Yet visual cortex is typically used by awake animals while they actively navigate an environment. I will describe three studies recently performed in my laboratory to investigate how visual processing in mouse V1 is affected by wakefulness, locomotion, and navigation. The first study, by Bilal Haider, indicates that wakefulness dramatically enhances synaptic inhibition, abolishing the balance of excitation and inhibition typically seen in V1 under anesthesia. The second study, by Asli Ayaz, indicates that locomotion profoundly alters spatial integration, greatly reducing the surround suppression that is common in V1 neurons of stationary animals. The third study, by Aman Saleem, reveals that V1 signals are modulated by virtual navigation, in a way that is ideally suited to code for the visual stimuli created by locomotion in the environment. These results indicate that visual processing in mouse V1 is profoundly affected by wakefulness, locomotion, and navigation, and reinforce the need for studying the cerebral cortex during natural behavior.