Enhancement and contextual modulation of visuospatial processing by thalamocollicular projections from ventral lateral geniculate nucleus

• Published in: Nature communications 2023-11, Vol.14 (1), p.7278-7278, Article 7278
• Main Authors: Li, Zhong, Peng, Bo, Huang, Junxiang J., Zhang, Yuan, Seo, Michelle B., Fang, Qi, Zhang, Guang-Wei, Zhang, Xiaohui, Zhang, Li I., Tao, Huizhong Whit
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 14; 14/19; 14/28; 631/378/2613/1838; 631/378/2613/2616; 631/378/3917; 64; 64/110; 9/30; Animals; Axons; Behavior; Data processing; Geniculate Bodies - physiology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Information processing; Lateral geniculate nucleus; Mammals; Mice; multidisciplinary; Neurons; Neurons - physiology; Neurosciences; Object recognition; Oculomotor behavior; Physiology; Preferences; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sensitivity enhancement; Sensorimotor integration; Success; Superior Colliculi - physiology; Superior colliculus; Thalamus; Visual Pathways - physiology; Visual system; γ-Aminobutyric acid
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43147-9

In the mammalian visual system, the ventral lateral geniculate nucleus (vLGN) of the thalamus receives salient visual input from the retina and sends prominent GABAergic axons to the superior colliculus (SC). However, whether and how vLGN contributes to fundamental visual information processing remains largely unclear. Here, we report in mice that vLGN facilitates visually-guided approaching behavior mediated by the lateral SC and enhances the sensitivity of visual object detection. This can be attributed to the extremely broad spatial integration of vLGN neurons, as reflected in their much lower preferred spatial frequencies and broader spatial receptive fields than SC neurons. Through GABAergic thalamocollicular projections, vLGN specifically exerts prominent surround suppression of visuospatial processing in SC, leading to a fine tuning of SC preferences to higher spatial frequencies and smaller objects in a context-dependent manner. Thus, as an essential component of the central visual processing pathway, vLGN serves to refine and contextually modulate visuospatial processing in SC-mediated visuomotor behaviors via visually-driven long-range feedforward inhibition. Here the authors show that inhibitory projections from the ventral geniculate nucleus to superior colliculus facilitate visual detection of small objects in a visually guided approaching behaviour by providing broad surround suppression to SC neurons.