Selective gating of retinal information by arousal

How sensory information is processed by the brain can depend on behavioral state. In the visual thalamus and cortex, arousal/locomotion is associated with changes in the magnitude of responses to visual stimuli. Here, we asked whether such modulation of visual responses might already occur at an earlier stage in this visual pathway. We measured neural activity of retinal axons using wide-field and two-photon calcium imaging in awake mouse thalamus across arousal states associated with different pupil sizes. Surprisingly, visual responses to drifting gratings in retinal axonal boutons were robustly modulated by arousal level, in a manner that varied across stimulus dimensions and across functionally distinct subsets of boutons. At low and intermediate spatial frequencies, the majority of boutons were suppressed by arousal. In contrast, at high spatial frequencies, the proportions of boutons showing enhancement or suppression were more similar, particularly for boutons tuned to regions of visual space ahead of the mouse. Arousal-related modulation also varied with a bouton’s sensitivity to luminance changes and direction of motion, with greater response suppression in boutons tuned to luminance decrements vs. increments, and in boutons preferring motion along directions or axes of optic flow. Together, our results suggest that differential filtering of distinct visual information channels by arousal state occurs at very early stages of visual processing, before the information is transmitted to neurons in visual thalamus. Such early filtering may provide an efficient means of optimizing central visual processing and perception of state-relevant visual stimuli.