Natural stimuli for mice: environment statistics and neural representations in the early visual system (D01 (ehem. 10))

• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 276693517

From this project, we expect to improve our understanding of which visual features of the environment are sampled by the mouse with combined head and eye movements, to yield robust representations of naturalistic visual stimuli. We also expect to gain insight into how the early visual system uses specialised coding strategies for different aspects of the visual environment, such as the upper vs. lower visual fields. Finally, we expect to learn more about the role of “suppressed-by-contrast” (SbC) neurons, a non-standard, fre-quent, but poorly-understood functional cell type of the early visual system, in encoding of natural scenes.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1233: Robust Vision - Inference Principles and Neural Mechanisms
• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Laura Busse; Professor Dr. Thomas Euler; Professor Dr. Frank Schaeffel, until 12/2020