Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Department Genes – Circuits – Behavior, Martinsried, Germany
Thomas O Helmbrecht
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Department Genes – Circuits – Behavior, Martinsried, Germany; Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, LMU BioCenter, Martinsried, Germany
Duncan S Mearns
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Department Genes – Circuits – Behavior, Martinsried, Germany; Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, LMU BioCenter, Martinsried, Germany
Linda Jordan
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Department Genes – Circuits – Behavior, Martinsried, Germany
Nouwar Mokayes
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Department Genes – Circuits – Behavior, Martinsried, Germany
Retinal axon projections form a map of the visual environment in the tectum. A zebrafish larva typically detects a prey object in its peripheral visual field. As it turns and swims towards the prey, the stimulus enters the central, binocular area, and seemingly expands in size. By volumetric calcium imaging, we show that posterior tectal neurons, which serve to detect prey at a distance, tend to respond to small objects and intrinsically compute their direction of movement. Neurons in anterior tectum, where the prey image is represented shortly before the capture strike, are tuned to larger object sizes and are frequently not direction-selective, indicating that mainly interocular comparisons serve to compute an object’s movement at close range. The tectal feature map originates from a linear combination of diverse, functionally specialized, lamina-specific, and topographically ordered retinal ganglion cell synaptic inputs. We conclude that local cell-type composition and connectivity across the tectum are adapted to the processing of location-dependent, behaviorally relevant object features.
