Visual pursuit behavior in mice maintains the pursued prey on the retinal region with least optic flow

Mice have a large visual field that is constantly stabilized by vestibular ocular reflex (VOR) driven eye rotations that counter head-rotations. While maintaining their extensive visual coverage is advantageous for predator detection, mice also track and capture prey using vision. However, in the freely moving animal quantifying object location in the field of view is challenging. Here, we developed a method to digitally reconstruct and quantify the visual scene of freely moving mice performing a visually based prey capture task. By isolating the visual sense and combining a mouse eye optic model with the head and eye rotations, the detailed reconstruction of the digital environment and retinal features were projected onto the corneal surface for comparison, and updated throughout the behavior. By quantifying the spatial location of objects in the visual scene and their motion throughout the behavior, we show that the prey image consistently falls within a small area of the VOR-stabiliz...小鼠拥有广阔的视野，其视野可通过对抗头部转动的前庭眼反射（vestibular ocular reflex, VOR）驱动的眼球转动实现持续稳定。尽管维持广阔的视觉覆盖范围对捕食者侦测具有显著优势，但小鼠同样会借助视觉追踪并捕获猎物。然而，针对自由活动的动物，量化其视野内物体的位置极具挑战性。为此，我们开发了一种方法，可对执行视觉依赖型猎物捕获任务的自由活动小鼠的视觉场景开展数字化重构与量化分析。通过分离视觉感知通路，并结合小鼠眼部光学模型与头、眼转动数据，我们将数字化环境的精细重构结果与视网膜特征投射至角膜表面以完成比对，并在整个行为实验过程中持续更新该模型。通过量化视觉场景内物体的空间位置及其在行为过程中的运动状态，我们发现猎物图像始终落在由VOR维持稳定的……