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Published March 12, 2015 | Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Orientation columns in the mouse superior colliculus

Abstract

More than twenty types of retinal ganglion cells conduct visual information from the eye to the rest of the brain. Each retinal ganglion cell type tessellates the retina in a regular mosaic, so that every point in visual space is processed for visual primitives such as contrast and motion. This information flows to two principal brain centres: the visual cortex and the superior colliculus. The superior colliculus plays an evolutionarily conserved role in visual behaviours, but its functional architecture is poorly understood. Here we report on population recordings of visual responses from neurons in the mouse superior colliculus. Many neurons respond preferentially to lines of a certain orientation or movement axis. We show that cells with similar orientation preferences form large patches that span the vertical thickness of the retinorecipient layers. This organization is strikingly different from the randomly interspersed orientation preferences in the mouse's visual cortex; instead, it resembles the orientation columns observed in the visual cortices of large mammals. Notably, adjacent superior colliculus orientation columns have only limited receptive field overlap. This is in contrast to the organization of visual cortex, where each point in the visual field activates neurons with all preferred orientations. Instead, the superior colliculus favours specific contour orientations within ~30° regions of the visual field, a finding with implications for behavioural responses mediated by this brain centre.

Additional Information

©2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Received 06 August 2014. Accepted 24 November 2014. Published online 17 December 2014. We thank E. Soucy and J. Greenwood for assistance with instrumentation; M. Joesch, A. Krishnaswamy, D. Kostadinov, S. Pashkovski, A. Giessel, T. Dunn, G. Keller, P. Kaifosh, M. Amoroso, and H. Asari for software; M. Andermann, V. Bonin, and F. Engert for advice on microscope design; J. Cohen for headplate designs; D. Anderson, K. Blum, B. Ölveckzy, and J. Sanes for critical reading of the manuscript; and J. Sanes for providing laboratory space and support to E.H.F. E.H.F. was supported by NIH T32 NS007484 and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship. Additional support was provided by an NIH grant to M.M.

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