View invariant representations in ancestral cortex

A multilayered, thalamo-recipient visual cortex emerged ~320 MYA in stem amniotes. Despite its importance for understanding the evolution of cortical computation, its function remains unknown. We recorded visually evoked responses in the dorsal cortex of behaving turtles, considered a mammalian neocortex homolog. Using a spatial oddball paradigm, we found tuning to stimuli in deviant positions alongside adaptation to standard positions within the visual field. Eye tracking demonstrated that responses remained spatially selective despite gaze shifts altering retinal stimulus position. Thus, the turtle cortex encodes unexpected visual stimuli using computations invariant to retinal position, a property previously observed only in higher mammalian cortices. These results indicate that invariance computations preceded the evolution of local filtering computations in mammalian primary cortices, pointing to a new function for ancestral cortices. They also challenge hierarchical models of inva..., , , ## **Title of dataset:**

## View invariant representations in ancestral cortex

Access this dataset on Dryad. DOI: [10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mm6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mm6)

## Description of the data and file structure:

Code for reproducing figures for Becker et al, \"View invariant representations in ancestral cortex\"

The pre-processed electrophysiological data, as well as head and eye angles of the experimental animals, are included to reproduce the specific data shown in our publication. The code provided loads the data and creates the subplots of the figures, visualizing and explaining the data provided. The code is supposed to be run in Matlab 2024b, no further packages are necessary.

Each Figure/subfigure has a script and corresponding metadata that will be loaded in the script. It is recommended to download all files into a folder and make it the current directory in matlab. Then each script can be opened, and the metadata will automatically be loaded from the same f...