A standardized and reproducible behavioral protocol to elicit visual spatial attention in mice
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Understanding how neural activity gives rise to cognitive processes such as selective attention is a fundamental goal of neuroscience. An important but often overlooked advance towards this goal requires the development and sharing of rigorous and reproducible behavioral tasks across labs; this is particularly important given the recent surge in studies of cognition and perception in mice. Here, we developed a standardized training protocol for head-fixed mice to become experts in a psychometric visual contrast detection task in just 17 days. Experts detected stimuli at two distinct spatial locations for several hundred trials per day. As consecutive trials elapsed at either location, the speed, accuracy, and contrast sensitivity of visual perception improved - all hallmarks of spatial attention improving performance, as seen in primates. These findings validate the efficacy of this protocol to reveal multiple aspects of selective spatial attention in mice, establishing a rigorous and reproducible tool for the community.
Institutions: Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G1025361339, Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), Tracking Flow of Attention in Visual Circuits Across the Brain, Circuit and Synaptic Mechanisms of Visual Spatial Attention, The impact of behavioral state and spatial attention on sensory responses in the primary visual thalamus, G8039452992, G8541091971, Functional organization and spatial resolution of attentional feedback from frontal to visual cortex, Training In Systems And Integrative Biology Neuroscience
OpenAlex ID: W7116830506