Selective binocular integration in mouse visual cortex: binocular but not monocular neurons respond distinctly to congruent stimuli
- 1University of Amsterdam
Abstract
Even though binocular integration is a foremost example of integrative computations in the brain, it remains unknown how the visual cortex mediates it. Here, we investigated neuronal responses to binocular stimuli in layers 2/3 of mouse primary visual cortex (V1) and lateromedial (LM) area with in vivo two-photon imaging. We presented mice with three types of binocular stimuli: congruent gratings, orthogonal gratings and a flashing Mondrian pattern in binocular conflict with a grating. We looked for congruency-specific responses to the binocular stimuli, but found that most neurons responded homogeneously across stimulus types. Responses of cells with a strong monocular preference for the contralateral eye responded similarly to monocular and binocular stimulation, while responses of cells with a preference for ipsilateral stimuli showed a strong but nonspecific suppression to all binocular stimuli. Only cells without a strong monocular preference (i.e. binocular cells) exhibited linear integration of monocular responses to incongruent stimuli and binocular facilitation to congruent gratings. Responses to ipsilateral components of a binocular display were found to be poor predictors of binocular responses regardless of eye preference of individual cells. We conclude that most neuronal responses to binocular stimuli in mouse V1 & LM are uninformative about the congruency of the monocular components, with the exception of binocular cells which show either linear or supralinear integration.
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BibTeX
@misc{bassler2026selective,
title = {{Selective binocular integration in mouse visual cortex: binocular but not monocular neurons respond distinctly to congruent stimuli}},
author = {M. Bassler and G. Huis in't Veld and M. Suzuki and C. Pennartz},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.09.750336},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.09.750336v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Selective binocular integration in mouse visual cortex: binocular but not monocular neurons respond distinctly to congruent stimuli
AU - M. Bassler
AU - G. Huis in't Veld
AU - M. Suzuki
AU - C. Pennartz
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.09.750336
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.09.750336v1
AB - Even though binocular integration is a foremost example of integrative computations in the brain, it remains unknown how the visual cortex mediates it. Here, we investigated neuronal responses to binocular stimuli in layers 2/3 of mouse primary visual cortex (V1) and lateromedial (LM) area with in vivo two-photon imaging. We presented mice with three types of binocular stimuli: congruent gratings, orthogonal gratings and a flashing Mondrian pattern in binocular conflict with a grating. We looked for congruency-specific responses to the binocular stimuli, but found that most neurons responded homogeneously across stimulus types. Responses of cells with a strong monocular preference for the contralateral eye responded similarly to monocular and binocular stimulation, while responses of cells with a preference for ipsilateral stimuli showed a strong but nonspecific suppression to all binocular stimuli. Only cells without a strong monocular preference (i.e. binocular cells) exhibited linear integration of monocular responses to incongruent stimuli and binocular facilitation to congruent gratings. Responses to ipsilateral components of a binocular display were found to be poor predictors of binocular responses regardless of eye preference of individual cells. We conclude that most neuronal responses to binocular stimuli in mouse V1 & LM are uninformative about the congruency of the monocular components, with the exception of binocular cells which show either linear or supralinear integration.
ER -