Active sensing during a visual perceptual decision-making task

From the Welsh tidy mouse to the New York City pizza rat, movement reveals rodent intelligence. Here, we show that some head-fixed mice developed an active sensing strategy in a visual perceptual decision-making task ¹ . Akin to humans shaking a computer mouse to find the cursor on a screen, some mice wiggled a wheel that controlled the movement of a visual stimulus preferentially during low-contrast trials. When mice wiggled the wheel, the low visual stimulus contrast accuracy increased. Moreover, these wiggles moved the visual stimulus at a temporal frequency (11.5 ± 2.5 Hz) within the range that maximizes visual contrast sensitivity in rodents ² . Perturbing the task contingency and visuo-motor coupling reduced wiggle behavior. Together, these results show that some mice wiggle the wheel to boost the salience of low visual contrast stimuli. This provides evidence for active sensing in head-fixed mouse vision.