Abstract To understand how activity in mammalian neural circuits controls behavior, the mouse is a promising model system due to the convergence of genetic, optical, and physiological methods. The ability to control and quantify behavior precisely is also essential for these studies. We developed an operant visual detection paradigm to make visual psychophysical measurements: head-fixed mice make responses by pressing a lever. We designed this task to permit neurophysiological studies of behavior in cerebral cortex, where activity is variable from trial to trial and neurons encode many types of information simultaneously. To study neural responses in the face of this complexity, we trained mice to do a task where they perform hundreds of trials daily and perceptual thresholds can be measured. We used this task to measure both visual acuity and the minimum detectable contrast in behaving mice. We found that the mouse contrast response function is similar in shape to other species. They can detect low-contrast stimuli, with a peak contrast threshold of 2%, equivalent to ∼15° eccentric in human vision. Mouse acuity is modest, with an upper limit near 0.5 cycles/°, consistent with prior data. acuity psychophysics vision Copyright © 2012 the American Physiological Society « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article Published online before print November 2011 , doi: 10.1152/jn.00609.2011 AJP - JN Physiol February 2012 vol. 107 no. 3 758-765 » Abstract Free Full Text Free to you Full Text (PDF) Free to you Supplemental Video All Versions of this Article: jn.00609.2011v1 107/3/758 most recent Classifications Article Services Email this article to a friend Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Histed, M. H. Articles by Maunsell, J. H. R. PubMed PubMed citation Articles by Histed, M. H. Articles by Maunsell, J. H. R. Related Content Load related web page information Current Issue February 2012, 107 (3) Alert me to new issues of AJP - JN Physiol About the Journal Information for Authors Submit a Manuscript Ethical Policies AuthorChoice PubMed Central Policy Reprints and Permissions Advertising Press Copyright © 2012 the American Physiological Society Print ISSN: 0022-3077 Online ISSN: 1522-1598 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-2924550-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();
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