Extended Data Figure 10 |. P1 neurons enhance the gain of LC10a neurons without altering their receptive fields.

a, Left: schematic of synchronous recordings from P1 neurons in the LPC and LC10a neurons in the AOTu. Middle: cross-covariance of P1 neuron activity and LC10a activity during spontaneous courtship trial. Right: same as middle, but zoomed in to highlight that P1 neurons activity leads LC10a activity. Maximum covariance occurred at lag = −500ms. b, LC10a responses to presentation of a 10° sweeping dot in the progressive or regressive direction before and during activation of P1 neurons. Top: Average LC10a response during presentation of a regressively (orange) or progressively (blue) moving stimulus in the absence of P1 activation; bottom: average LC10a response during presentation of a regressively (orange) or progressively (blue) moving stimulus in the presence of P1 activation. c-e, same as b but for a sweeping 25° sphere, a sweeping 10° wide tall bar, or an approaching sphere expanding from 10° at 20°/s. Red indicates P1stimulation and black indicates pre-stimulation baseline throughout. f, Response Modulation Index (see Methods) for each stimulus presented before and during P1 activation, indicating that responses to the distinct visual stimuli are near uniformly enhanced. g, Average evoked ipsilateral turning in response to progressive motion of the different targets during P1 activation, plotted versus the average evoked LC10 response in the same period. Note that turning responses evoked by the motion of these diverse stimuli were proportional to the magnitude of LC10a evoked calcium transients: sweeping dots evoked the strongest turns, bars evoked much weaker turns, and slowly looming spheres did not elicit any turning on average, presumably because both eyes are stimulated equally. h, Average evoked linear speed in response to progressive motion of the different targets during P1 activation, plotted versus the average evoked LC10 response in the same period. i, Direction Selectivity Index (see Methods) for sweeping stimuli presented during baseline recordings or during continuous P1 activation. Positive values indicate a preference for progressive motion, negative values indicate preference for regressive motion. All shaded line plots are mean±s.e.m.; n.s. indicates p>0.05; details of statistical analyses and sample sizes are given in Supplementary Table 1.