Data and code for "Spatial attention enhances network, cellular and subthreshold responses in mouse visual cortex," Speed et al., Nature Communications 2020.

This data archive contains all code and data necessary to replicate each main text figure and associated statistical comparisons in the following article:

Speed, A., Del Rosario, J., Mikail, N., & Haider, B. (2020). Spatial attention enhances network, cellular and subthreshold responses in mouse visual cortex. Nature communications, 11(1), 505. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14355-4

The data and code is compatible with Matlab 2016b or later.

The data archive is organized as self-contained subfolders corresponding to the results found in each main figure (e.g., folder 'F1' for results of Figure 1). Each subfolder contains the minimally processed data structures and commented code for replication of the published figures.

Abstract of associated publication: Internal brain states strongly modulate sensory processing during behaviour. Studies of visual processing in primates show that attention to space selectively improves behavioural and neural responses to stimuli at the attended locations. Here we develop a visual spatial task for mice that elicits behavioural improvements consistent with the effects of spatial attention, and simultaneously measure network, cellular, and subthreshold activity in primary visual cortex. During trial-by-trial behavioural improvements, local field potential (LFP) responses to stimuli detected inside the receptive field (RF) strengthen. Moreover, detection inside the RF selectively enhances excitatory and inhibitory neuron responses to task-irrelevant stimuli and suppresses noise correlations and low frequency LFP fluctuations. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings reveal that detection inside the RF increases synaptic activity that depolarizes membrane potential responses at the behaviorally relevant location. Our study establishes that mice display fundamental signatures of visual spatial attention spanning behavioral, network, cellular, and synaptic levels, providing new insight into rapid cognitive enhancement of sensory signals in visual cortex.