Figure 1. Cross-modal divided attention in the mouse.

(a) Hypothesized control of visual gain under cross-modal conditions (LGN; lateral geniculate nucleus; V1: primary visual cortex). (b) Task design. A mouse is simultaneously informed about trial availability and the nature of the target stimulus through binaurally delivered noise. In this schematic, brown noise denotes ‘attend to vision’ and blue noise denotes ‘attend to audition’. Following a variable anticipation where the mouse is required to hold its snout in a centrally located poke, conflicting auditory and visual stimuli are presented. By design, the task is asymmetric, having a visual detection component (presence or absence of light at the reward location) and an auditory discrimination component (upsweep; turn left, downsweep; turn right). (c) Mice exhibited comparable performance on visual and auditory trials (mean ± s.e.m., n = 15 mice). (d) Visual detection performance in cross-modal trials compared to visual-only trials (n = 4 mice, ≥421 trials per condition). Note that both detection threshold and peak performance were lower in the cross-modal condition. (e) Eliminating auditory distractor in the cross-modal condition did not impact the visual detection psychometric function (n = 4 mice, ≥211 trials per condition). (f) When mice were not differentially cued but instead ignored the auditory stimulus by learning that it was not rewarded over a full session (reversal learning) visual detection threshold did not change (n = 6 mice, ≥242 trials per condition). (g) Visual detection threshold (bootstrap computed) of the pertinent psychometric functions in c–e. Error bars in (d–g) are 95% confidence intervals, and therefore, non-overlap denotes significance of p < 0.05.