Xiaoxuan Jia, PhD 
Allen Institute for Brain Science

Functional Hierarchy of Mouse Visual Areas and its Behavioral Relevance
The anatomy of the mouse visual system indicates it is organized hierarchically, yet direct functional evidence is still lacking. Here, we simultaneously recorded spiking activity from tens of thousands of neurons from six cortical and two thalamic regions along the anatomically defined visual hierarchy in awake mice. Using cross-correlation analysis, we reveal that the organization of inter-area functional connectivity during visual stimulation mirrors the anatomical hierarchy. We find that classical hierarchical measures — receptive field size, response latency, response decay timescale, receptive field complexity, and response dimensionality — are all correlated with the hierarchy. Moreover, recordings during a visual change-detection task reveal that behavioral relevant signals in neural activity increase along the hierarchy, indicating the hierarchical processing is relevant for behavior. These results suggest a functional hierarchy that follows anatomy during sensory drive, which forms the first principle of functional organization in mouse visual systems. Our study provides a foundation for understanding coding and signal propagation across hierarchically organized cortical and thalamic visual areas in mice.

This lecture is part of the candidate review for the Molecular Mechanisms of the Mind faculty position in the Department of Psychology.  Faculty host: Joe Sisneros, sisneros@uw.edu.

Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by 1/18/21 to chairpsy@uw.edu.