Involvement of Striatal Direct Pathway in Visual Spatial Attention in Mice

• Published in: Current biology 2020-12, Vol.30 (23), p.4739-4744.e5
• Main Authors: Wang, Lupeng, Krauzlis, Richard J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: attention; basal ganglia; decision making; mice; mouse; optogenetic; perception; spatial; striatum; visual
• ISSN: 0960-9822; 1879-0445
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.083

The basal ganglia are implicated in a range of perceptual functions [1], in addition to their well-known role in the regulation of movement [2]. One unifying explanation for these diverse roles is that the basal ganglia control the level of commitment to particular motor or cognitive outcomes based on the behavioral context [3, 4]. If this explanation is applicable to the allocation of visual spatial attention, then the involvement of basal ganglia circuits should incorporate the subject’s expectations about the spatial location of upcoming events as well as the routing of visual signals that guide the response. From the viewpoint of signal detection theory, these changes in the level of commitment might correspond to shifts in the subject’s decision criterion, one of two distinct components recently ascribed to visual selective attention [5]. We tested this idea using unilateral optogenetic activation of neurons in the dorsal striatum of mice during a visual spatial attention task [6], taking advantage of the ability to specifically target medium spiny neurons in the “direct” pathway associated with promoting responses [7, 8]. By comparing results across attention task conditions, we found that direct-pathway activation caused changes in performance determined by the spatial probability and location of the visual event. Moreover, across conditions with identical visual stimulation, activation shifted the decision criterion selectively when attention was directed to the contralateral visual field. These results demonstrate that activity through the basal ganglia may play an important and distinct role among the multifarious mechanisms that accomplish visual spatial attention. •Activating basal ganglia direct pathway alters visual attention task performance•Effects depend on how much attention is allocated to the contralateral visual field•Some changes in behavior are linked to the lateralized processing of visual signals•Other effects depend on the spatial expectations prompted by the spatial cues By combining optogenetic manipulation of the striatal direct pathway with visual attention tasks adapted from work in primates, Wang and Krauzlis show that activity through the basal ganglia in mice plays a distinct role in the allocation of visual spatial attention.