Neuron
Volume 108, Issue 4, 25 November 2020, Pages 722-734.e5
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Article
An Optical Illusion Pinpoints an Essential Circuit Node for Global Motion Processing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.08.027Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • The pretectum is indispensable for real and illusory motion perception

  • MAE responsiveness subdivides neurons with the same direction selectivity

  • MAE-correlated neurons form a cluster in the ventral lateral pretectum

  • The pretectal MAE cluster is required and sufficient to drive OKR

Summary

Direction-selective (DS) neurons compute the direction of motion in a visual scene. Brain-wide imaging in larval zebrafish has revealed hundreds of DS neurons scattered throughout the brain. However, the exact population that causally drives motion-dependent behaviors—e.g., compensatory eye and body movements—remains largely unknown. To identify the behaviorally relevant population of DS neurons, here we employ the motion aftereffect (MAE), which causes the well-known “waterfall illusion.” Together with region-specific optogenetic manipulations and cellular-resolution functional imaging, we found that MAE-responsive neurons represent merely a fraction of the entire population of DS cells in larval zebrafish. They are spatially clustered in a nucleus in the ventral lateral pretectal area and are necessary and sufficient to steer the entire cycle of optokinetic eye movements. Thus, our illusion-based behavioral paradigm, combined with optical imaging and optogenetics, identified key circuit elements of global motion processing in the vertebrate brain.

Keywords

motion processing
motion aftereffect
optokinetic response
direction selectivity
pretectum
calcium imaging
Optogenetics
labeled-line circuit organization

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