Preference-independent saliency map in the mouse superior colliculus.

Abstract

Detecting salient stimuli in a visual scene is crucial for animal survival, yet how the brain encodes visual saliency remains unclear. Here, using two-photon calcium imaging, we reveal a preference-independent saliency map in the superficial superior colliculus of awake mice. Salient stimuli evoke stronger responses than uniform stimuli in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons, with similar encoding patterns across both cell types. The strongest response occurs when a salient stimulus is centered within the receptive field, with contextual effects extending approximately 40°. Response amplitude scales with saliency strength but remains independent of neurons' orientation or motion direction preferences. Notably, saliency-encoding neurons exhibit weak orientation and direction selectivity, indicating a complementary relationship between saliency and feature maps. Importantly, this preference-independent saliency encoding does not require cortical inputs. These findings provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying visual saliency detection.