Region-specific auditory and visual plasticity in mouse visual cortex after early visual deprivation

Abstract

A lack of early visual experience causes pronounced lasting auditory and visual cross-modal changes. However, the region-specific cross-modal organization of the visual cortex at the single-neuron level remains unknown. Here, we used two-photon calcium imaging in awake mice that were reared in darkness from birth and were consequently exposed to light in adulthood to map auditory and visual responsiveness of single neurons. We targeted neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) and higher visual cortical areas (HVAs) that resemble the ventral and dorsal stream regions. We found that lateral dorsal stream areas showed a pronounced increase in auditory response strength, even after accounting for tone-induced whisker movement. Strikingly, this was accompanied by a decreased visual drive, measured by the number of recruited neurons, response strength, population orientation decoding accuracy and neural manifold size, although these visual effects were more widespread across cortical regions. Together, these results provide a comprehensive functional map of auditory and visual cross-modal changes after a lack of early visual experience across the mouse visual cortex. Moreover, our results suggest that a lack of visual drive of dorsal stream regions might provide an opportunity for the remaining senses to take over