Brainstem serotonin neurons selectively gate retinal information flow to thalamus.

Retinal ganglion cell (RGC) types relay parallel streams of visual feature information. We hypothesized that neuromodulators might efficiently control which visual information streams reach the cortex by selectively gating transmission from specific RGC axons in the thalamus. Using fiber photometry recordings, we found that optogenetic stimulation of serotonergic axons in primary visual thalamus of awake mice suppressed ongoing and visually evoked calcium activity and glutamate release from RGC boutons.

Visual association cortex links cues with conjunctions of reward and locomotor contexts.

Postrhinal cortex (POR) and neighboring lateral visual association areas are necessary for identifying objects and interpreting them in specific contexts, but how POR neurons encode the same object across contexts remains unclear. Here, we imaged excitatory neurons in mouse POR across tens of days prior to and throughout initial cue-reward learning and reversal learning. We assessed responses to the same cue when it was rewarded or unrewarded, during both locomotor and stationary contexts.