Visual Motion and Form Integration in the Behaving Ferret
Ferrets have become a standard animal model for the development of early visual stages. Less is known about higher-level vision in ferrets, both during development and in adulthood. Here, as a step towards establishing higher-level vision research in ferrets, we used behavioral experiments to test t...
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Published in | eNeuro Vol. 6; no. 4; p. ENEURO.0228-19.2019 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Society for Neuroscience
01.07.2019
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Ferrets have become a standard animal model for the development of early visual stages. Less is known about higher-level vision in ferrets, both during development and in adulthood. Here, as a step towards establishing higher-level vision research in ferrets, we used behavioral experiments to test the motion and form integration capacity of adult ferrets. Motion integration was assessed by training ferrets to discriminate random dot kinematograms (RDK) based on their direction. Task difficulty was varied systematically by changing RDK coherence levels, which allowed the measurement of motion integration thresholds. Form integration was measured analogously by training ferrets to discriminate linear Glass patterns of varying coherence levels based on their orientation. In all experiments, ferrets proved to be good psychophysical subjects that performed tasks reliably. Crucially, the behavioral data showed clear evidence of perceptual motion and form integration. In the monkey, motion and form integration are usually associated with processes occurring in higher-level visual areas. In a second set of experiments, we therefore tested whether PSS, a higher-level motion area in the ferret, could similarly support motion integration behavior in this species. To this end, we measured responses of PSS neurons to RDK of different coherence levels. Indeed, neurometric functions for PSS were in good agreement with the behaviorally derived psychometric functions. In conclusion, our experiments demonstrate that ferrets are well suited for higher-level vision research. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Author contributions: E.D.-W., S.U.N., and K.J.N. designed research; E.D.-W., S.U.N., A.A.L., J.M.L., J.L., and P.S. performed research; E.D.-W. and S.U.N. analyzed data; E.D.-W. and K.J.N. wrote the paper. J. M. Law’s present address: Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110 J. Ledley’s present address: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston MA, 02115 This work was supported by the National Eye Institute Grant EY027853 and by the Science of Learning Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The authors declare no competing financial interests. S. U. Nummela’s present address: Truckee Meadows Community College, Department of Biology, Reno, NV 89512 |
ISSN: | 2373-2822 2373-2822 |
DOI: | 10.1523/ENEURO.0228-19.2019 |