UC Santa Barbara

Visual information is a primary contributor to many cognitive processes, includinglearning, memory, and navigation. The mechanism by which visual stimuli from the external world are processed, transformed, and ultimately utilized is an area of open research. To tackle this question, we use cutting edge microscopy techniques in mice to thoroughly examine how visual stimuli are represented and processed in the brain. First, we examine how the visual cortex represents coherent motion, finding that there is significant heterogeneity in the responses of neurons to coherent motion across different visual cortical regions, as in primate visual cortex. Unexpectedly, we also found significant anisotropy in neural responses within each visual area that was highly correlated to visual elevation, but not azimuth. Second, we sought to understand how processed visual information is used in navigation, via studying the head direction network, which is important for representing the animal’s orientation in an environment. Importantly, we also found a specific subclass of neurons which registers the responses from similarly tuned neurons across different cortical systems to anchor our internal heading to the external world. Third, we examined the effects of retinoic acid inhibitors on a mouse model of photoreceptor degenerative disease. We found that we were able to restore light-driven responses in the retina, stimulus coding in the visual cortex, and performance in a behavioral task. Together, these results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how visual stimuli are processed and incorporated by the neocortex to inform cognition.