Holding visual attention for 400millionyears: A model of tectum and torus longitudinalis in teleost fishes.

Only ray-finned fishes possess a torus longitudinalis (TL), a paired, elongated body attached to the medial margins of the optic tectum. Its granule cells project large numbers of fine fibers running laterally over adjacent tectum, synapsing excitatorily on the spiny dendrites of pyramidal cells. Sustained TL activity is evoked visuotopically by dark stimuli; TL bursting is a corollary discharge of saccadic eye movements. To suggest a function for this ancient structure, neural network models were constructed to show that: (1) pyramidal cells could form an attentional locus, selecting one out of several moving objects to track, but rapid image shifts caused by saccades disrupt tracking; (2) TL could supply both the pre-saccade position of a locus, and the shift predicted from a saccade so as to prime pyramidal dendrites at the target location, ensuring the locus stays with the attended object; (3) that the specific pattern of synaptic connections required for such predictive priming could be learned by an unsupervised rule; (4) temporal and spatial filtering of visual pattern input to TL allows learning from a complex scene. The principles thus evinced could apply to trans-saccadic attention and visual stability in other species.

Responses of the teleostean nucleus isthmi to looming objects and other moving stimuli.

Visually evoked extracellular neural activity was recorded from the nucleus isthmi (NI) of goldfish and bluegill sunfish. When moving anywhere within the right eye's visual field, three-dimensional checkered balls or patterns on a computer screen evoked bursts of spikes in the left NI. Object motion parallel to the longitudinal body axis gave responses that habituated markedly upon repetition, but movement into recently unstimulated regions of the visual field gave vigorous responses. Thus, while NI's response is not visuotopic, its habituation is. An object approaching the animal's body generated a rising spike density, whereas object recession generated only a transient burst. During the approach of a checkered stimulus ball, average NI spike density rose linearly as the ball-to-eye distance decreased and at a rate proportional to the ball's speed (2.5-30 cm/s). Increasing ball size (2.2-9.2 cm) did not affect the rate of activity rise at a given speed, but did increase overall activity levels. NI also responded reliably to expanding textures of fixed overall size. The results suggest that NI signals changes in motion of objects relative to the fish, and estimates the proximity of approaching objects.

Functional relationship between nucleus isthmi and tectum in teleosts: synchrony but no topography.

Neural activity in the optic tectum was compared with activity in the nucleus isthmi (NI) of both goldfish and sunfish with the aim of understanding how the two brain structures interact to process visual information. The two species yielded very similar results. Superficial tectum responds reliably to visual stimulation with topographically organized receptive fields; deep tectum and NI respond to stimulation throughout the field of the contralateral eye and habituate rapidly. Bursts of large-amplitude spiking in NI occur spontaneously and in response to contralateral visual stimulation. These NI bursts correlate with activity bursts across the tectal lobe on the same side, especially in the deeper layers. NI bursts may also synchronize with spiking activity in deep tectum. Trains of small-amplitude spikes in NI can be elicited by both ipsilateral and contralateral stimulation, but are not reflected in tectal activity. Simultaneous recordings from two sites in one NI were almost identical, suggesting that NI operates as a functional unit, broadcasting the same message across the ipsilateral tectal lobe.