Dynamics of gaze control during prey capture in freely moving mice

Most studies of visual processing are conducted under head- and
gaze-restricted conditions. While this provides experimental control, it
radically limits the natural exploration of the visual world which is
typically achieved through directed eye, head, and body movements. As
such, less is known about how animals naturally sample the external visual
world to acquire relevant visual information in natural
contexts. To determine how mice target their gaze and sample the
visual world during natural behavior, we measured head and bilateral eye
movements in mice performing prey capture, an ethological behavior that
engages vision. We find that most eye movements are compensatory for head
movements but that non-compensatory movements occur during head turns.
Importantly, we find that non-compensatory gaze shifts (i.e.,
saccades) do not target a discreet location in visual
space (e.g., the prey location), but that orienting movements are driven
by the head and work to sequentially shift and recenter the visual
field. Data shared here include simultaneous recordings of eye
and head movements from 105 trials of prey capture behavior across 7
animals. All data are available as .mat files.