Dynamics of gaze control during prey capture in freely moving mice

Abstract
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Abstract

Many studies of visual processing are conducted in constrained conditions such as head- and gaze-fixation, and therefore less is known about how animals actively acquire visual information in natural contexts. To determine how mice target their gaze during natural behavior, we measured head and bilateral eye movements in mice performing prey capture, an ethological behavior that engages vision. We found that the majority of eye movements are compensatory for head movements, thereby serving to stabilize the visual scene. During movement, however, periods of stabilization are interspersed with non-compensatory saccades that abruptly shift gaze position. Notably, these saccades do not preferentially target the prey location. Rather, orienting movements are driven by the head, with the eyes following in coordination to sequentially stabilize and recenter the gaze. These findings relate eye movements in the mouse to other species, and provide a foundation for studying active vision during ethological behaviors in the mouse.

Data availability

Behavioral data has been submitted to Dryad with DOI doi:10.5061/dryad.8cz8w9gmw

The following data sets were generated

(2020) Date from: Dynamics of gaze control during prey capture in freely moving mice
Dryad Digital Repository, 10.5061/dryad.8cz8w9gmw.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8cz8w9gmw

Article and author information

Author details

Angie M Michaiel

Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Elliott T T Abe

Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Cristopher M Niell

Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, United States

For correspondence
cniell@uoregon.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6283-3540

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R34NS111669)

Cristopher M Niell

University of Oregon (Promising Scholar Award)

Angie M Michaiel

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All procedures were conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health and were approved by the University of Oregon Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol number: 17-27).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.