Mismatch Receptive Fields in Mouse Visual Cortex

In primary visual cortex, a subset of neurons responds when a particular stimulus is encountered in a certain location in visual space. This activity can be modeled using a visual receptive field. In addition to visually driven activity, there are neurons in visual cortex that integrate visual and motor-related input to signal a mismatch between actual and predicted visual flow. Here we show that these mismatch neurons have receptive fields and signal a local mismatch between actual and predicted visual flow in restricted regions of visual space. These mismatch receptive fields are aligned to the retinotopic map of visual cortex and are similar in size to visual receptive fields. Thus, neurons with mismatch receptive fields signal local deviations of actual visual flow from visual flow predicted based on self-motion and could therefore underlie the detection of objects moving relative to the visual flow caused by self-motion. VIDEO ABSTRACT.