CTN: Naureen Ghani

Abstract: From the Welsh tidy mouse to the New York City pizza rat, movement belies rodent intelligence. We show that head-fixed mice develop an active sensing strategy while performing a visual perceptual decision-making task (The International Brain Laboratory, 2021). Akin to humans shaking a computer mouse to find the cursor on a screen, we demonstrate that mice wiggle the wheel that controls the movement of a visual stimulus to boost low contrast salience. Moreover, mice wiggle the wheel at a temporal frequency (11.9 ± 2.9 Hz) optimal for their visual systems (Umino et al, 2018). With the “old method of watching and wondering about behavior,” we reveal that mice exploit that it is easier to see something moving than something stationary by wiggling (Tinbergen, 1973).