The Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Apr 24;11(1):1986. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15909-2.
Visuospatial selective attention has been investigated primarily in head-fixed animals and almost exclusively in primates. Here, we develop two human-inspired, discrimination-based behavioral paradigms for studying selective visuospatial attention in freely behaving mice. In the 'spatial probability' task, we find enhanced accuracy, sensitivity, and rate of evidence accumulation at the location with higher probability of target occurrence, and opposite effects at the lower probability location. Together with video-based 3D head-tracking, these results demonstrate endogenous expectation-driven shifts of spatial attention. In the 'flanker' task, we find that a second stimulus presented with the target, but with conflicting information, causes switch-like decrements in accuracy and sensitivity as a function of its contrast, and slower evidence accumulation, demonstrating exogenous capture of spatial attention. The ability to study primate-like selective attention rigorously in unrestrained mice opens a rich avenue for research into neural circuit mechanisms underlying this critical executive function in a naturalistic setting.
视空间选择性注意主要在头部固定的动物中进行研究，几乎完全在灵长类动物中进行。在这里，我们开发了两种受人类启发的、基于辨别力的行为范式，用于研究自由活动的小鼠的选择性视空间注意。在“空间概率”任务中，我们发现目标出现概率较高的位置的准确性、敏感性和证据积累率提高，而在概率较低的位置则相反。结合基于视频的 3D 头部跟踪，这些结果表明了内源性期望驱动的空间注意转移。在“侧翼”任务中，我们发现当目标出现时，第二个与目标信息相冲突的刺激会导致准确性和敏感性呈开关式下降，其功能是作为其对比度的函数，证据积累速度较慢，这表明空间注意被外源性捕获。能够在不受约束的小鼠中严格研究类似灵长类的选择性注意，为在自然环境中研究这种关键执行功能的神经回路机制开辟了丰富的途径。
