PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Franke, Katrin
AU  - Willeke, Konstantin F.
AU  - Ponder, Kayla
AU  - Galdamez, Mario
AU  - Muhammad, Taliah
AU  - Patel, Saumil
AU  - Froudarakis, Emmanouil
AU  - Reimer, Jacob
AU  - Sinz, Fabian
AU  - Tolias, Andreas S.
TI  - Behavioral state tunes mouse vision to ethological features through pupil dilation
AID  - 10.1101/2021.09.03.458870
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.09.03.458870
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/06/2021.09.03.458870.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/06/2021.09.03.458870.full
AB  - Across animal species, sensory processing dynamically adapts to behavioral context. In the mammalian visual system, sensory neural responses and behavioral performance increase during an active behavioral state characterized by locomotion activity and pupil dilation, whereas preferred stimuli of individual neurons typically remain unchanged. Here, we address how behavioral states modulate stimulus selectivity in the context of colored natural scenes using a combination of large-scale population imaging, behavior, pharmacology, and deep neural network modeling. In visual cortex of awake mice, we identified a consistent shift of individual neuron color preferences towards ultraviolet stimuli during active behavioral periods that was particularly pronounced in the upper visual field. We found that the spectral shift in neural tuning is mediated by pupil dilation, resulting in a dynamic switch from rod-to cone-driven visual responses for constant ambient light levels. We further showed that this shift selectively enhances the discriminability of ultraviolet objects and facilitates the detection of ethological stimuli, such as aerial predators against the ultraviolet background of the twilight sky. Our results suggest a novel functional role for pupil dilation during active behavioral states as a bottom-up mechanism that, together with top-down neuromodulatory mechanisms, dynamically tunes visual representations to different behavioral demands.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.