Mice wiggle a wheel to boost the salience of low visual contrast stimuli

Abstract

From the Welsh tidy mouse to the New York City pizza rat, movement reveals rodent intelligence. Here, we show that some head-fixed mice developed an active sensing strategy in a visual perceptual decision-making task. Akin to humans shaking a computer mouse to find the cursor on a scree n, some mice wiggled a wheel that controlled the movement of a visual stimulus preferentially during low-contrast trials. When mice wiggled the wheel, the low visual stimulus contrast accuracy increased. Moreover, these wiggles moved the visual stimulus at a temporal frequency (11.5 {+/-} 2.5 Hz) within the range that maximizes contrast sensitivity in rodents. Perturbing the task contingency and visuo-motor coupling reduced wiggle behavior. The performance benefit of wiggle behavior persisted after controlling for arousal state, establishing wiggling as an active sensing strategy rather than an arousal-driven byproduct. Together, these results show that some mice wiggle the wheel to boost the salience of low visual contrast stimuli. This provides evidence for active sensing in head-fixed mouse vision. HighlightsO_LIWiggle speed positively correlates with low-contrast visual accuracy across 213 mice C_LIO_LIWiggles generate stimulus motion at a temporal frequency near maximal contrast sensitivity C_LIO_LIReversing task contingency or uncoupling the wheel suppresses wiggling C_LIO_LILonger wiggles are associated with enhanced neural decoding of stimulus identity in midbrain and thalamus C_LI