Defining hierarchical relationships in mouse visual cortex and conclusively relating specific areas to dorsal and ventral streams will require significant future behavioral, anatomical and functional work. Rodents can perform spatial and pattern discrimination tasks (Douglas et al., 2006, Prusky and Douglas, 2004, Sánchez et al., 1997 and Wong and Brown, 2006), similar to those shown to depend on dorsal and ventral pathways in higher species (Mishkin et al.,

1983). However, little is known about how specific mouse visual areas or pathways relate to these behaviors. GSK126 in vitro Recently, it was found that AL and LM afferents differentially target brain regions typically associated with the dorsal and ventral pathways (Wang et al., 2011). These anatomical distinctions led to the suggestion that LM and AL belong to the ventral and dorsal streams respectively. The results of our functional imaging study support the role of areas AL, RL, and AM in dorsal-like motion computations and of LI and PM in ventral-like spatial computations. However, our results are less conclusive for area LM’s

role in ventral-like computations. It encodes the highest TFs Dasatinib cell line in our data set and prefers moderate SFs—properties typically associated with the dorsal stream in other species (Van Essen and Gallant, 1994). In addition to behavioral and anatomical data, examining selectivity of higher visual areas to more complex stimuli can further illuminate the higher-order computations they perform and their relationships to information processing streams (Maunsell and Newsome,

1987). While our data indicate that mouse visual cortex shares general organizational principles with other species, several important distinctions can be made. One major difference Resveratrol between the rodent visual cortex and primate visual cortex is the existence of direct V1 input to essentially all extrastriate visual areas in the mouse and rat (Coogan and Burkhalter, 1993, Olavarria and Montero, 1989 and Wang and Burkhalter, 2007), whereas only areas V2, V3, V4, and MT are known to receive substantial direct V1 input in the primate brain (Felleman and Van Essen, 1991). Differences in the function and organization of visual areas between mice and other species are likely related to specializations resulting from species-specific behavioral adaptations. While multimodal interactions are typically associated with select higher-level areas in primates (Felleman and Van Essen, 1991 and Ungerleider and Mishkin, 1982), there is evidence that several rodent extrastriate areas process information related to other sensory modalities (Miller and Vogt, 1984, Sanderson et al., 1991 and Wagor et al., 1980).