Arne F. Meyer

Gaze dynamics in mice


The mouse has become one of the most prominent species in vision research, in part because enormous progress has been made in the last few years in developing new tools to monitor and manipulate neural activity in mice. However, how the freely-moving mouse uses head and eye movements (gaze) to actively explore its environment is largely unknown.

To answer this outstanding question, we used a system that we recently developed (Meyer et al., Neuron (2018)) to track head and eye movements in freely moving mice. We found that the complex eye movement patterns in mice can be decomposed into two distinct, independent components each linking eye and head but in different ways (Meyer et al., Current Biology (2020)). By further tracking head and eye movements in mice during social behaviors or when mice were performing a visually-guided tracking task, we found that these two types of eye-head coupling were maintained across a wide range of behaviors.

Current work aims at understanding the statistics of visual input during a wide range of behaviors and how this relates to the neural representation of visual input in mouse visual cortex (van Beest et al., Nature Communications (2021)) and how this is modified by motor-related signals.

Collaborators

Relevant publications

Mouse visual cortex contains a region of enhanced spatial resolution
van Beest EH*, Mukherjee S*, Kirchberger L*, Schnabel UH, van der Togt C, Teeuwen RRM, Barsegyan A, Meyer AF, Poort J, Roelfsema PR*, Self MW*
Nature Communications, 2021, 12, 4029. (article)

Two distinct types of eye-head coupling in freely moving mice
Meyer AF, O’Keefe J, Poort J
Current Biology, 2020, 30, 2116-2130 (bioRxiv preprint)

A head-mounted camera system integrates detailed behavioral monitoring with multichannel electrophysiology in freely moving mice
Meyer AF*, Poort J*, O’Keefe J, Sahani M, Linden JF
Neuron, 2018, 100, 46-60 (article)