Erasing motion: Scrambling direction selectivity in visual cortex during saccades

Abstract

Distinguishing sensory stimuli caused by changes in the environment from those caused by an animals own actions is a hallmark of sensory processing. Saccades are rapid eye movements that shift the image on the retina. How visual systems differentiate motion of the image induced by saccades from actual motion in the environment is not fully understood. Here, we discovered that in mouse primary visual cortex (V1), the two types of motion evoke distinct activity patterns. This is because during saccades, V1 combines the visual input with a strong non-visual input arriving from the thalamic pulvinar nucleus. Thus, the pulvinar input ensures differential V1 responses to external and self-generated motion and may allow the animal to interpret sensory stimuli within the context of its actions.