小柯机器人

美国俄勒冈大学Cristopher M. Niell等研究人员合作发现由视线转移引发的视觉处理动态序列。2023年11月23日，《自然—神经科学》杂志在线发表了这项成果。

研究人员表示，动物在探索视觉场景时会移动头部和眼睛。在啮齿动物的初级视觉皮层（V1）中发现了这些运动的神经相关性，但其来源和计算作用尚不清楚。

为了解决这个问题，研究人员将头和眼的运动测量与自由移动小鼠的神经记录结合起来。V1神经元主要对注视移动做出反应，在注视移动中，头部运动伴随着眼球的囊状运动，而不是对头部运动做出反应，在头部运动中，补偿性眼球运动稳定了注视。凝视移动后会出现多种活动模式，这些活动模式共同组成了一个在黑暗中不存在的时间序列。凝视移动的反应类似于连续闪烁的刺激所引起的反应，这表明很大一部分反应与新视觉输入的开始相对应。值得注意的是，神经元的反应序列与其空间频率偏置相匹配，这与从粗到细的处理过程一致。对自由凝视狨猴的记录也显示了类似的序列，同样与空间频率偏好一致。这些研究结果表明，小鼠和狨猴的主动视觉都是由与视觉取样相关的神经活动的动态时间序列组成的。

附：英文原文

Title: A dynamic sequence of visual processing initiated by gaze shifts

Author: Parker, Philip R. L., Martins, Dylan M., Leonard, Emmalyn S. P., Casey, Nathan M., Sharp, Shelby L., Abe, Elliott T. T., Smear, Matthew C., Yates, Jacob L., Mitchell, Jude F., Niell, Cristopher M.

Issue&Volume: 2023-11-23

Abstract: Animals move their head and eyes as they explore the visual scene. Neural correlates of these movements have been found in rodent primary visual cortex (V1), but their sources and computational roles are unclear. We addressed this by combining head and eye movement measurements with neural recordings in freely moving mice. V1 neurons responded primarily to gaze shifts, where head movements are accompanied by saccadic eye movements, rather than to head movements where compensatory eye movements stabilize gaze. A variety of activity patterns followed gaze shifts and together these formed a temporal sequence that was absent in darkness. Gaze-shift responses resembled those evoked by sequentially flashed stimuli, suggesting a large component corresponds to onset of new visual input. Notably, neurons responded in a sequence that matches their spatial frequency bias, consistent with coarse-to-fine processing. Recordings in freely gazing marmosets revealed a similar sequence following saccades, also aligned to spatial frequency preference. Our results demonstrate that active vision in both mice and marmosets consists of a dynamic temporal sequence of neural activity associated with visual sampling.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01481-7

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01481-7

Nature Neuroscience：《自然—神经科学》，创刊于1998年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：28.771
官方网址：https://www.nature.com/neuro/
投稿链接：https://mts-nn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex