Spatial biases in visual feature representation of mouse dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus boutons.

Humans and other mammals show spatial biases in their perception of visual features. Although the primary visual cortex is considered a source of these biases, earlier structures may also contribute. Recent work shows feature biases in the retina, but little is known about how they evolve as signals flow through the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (dLGN). Using in vivo calcium imaging, we investigated spatial frequency, orientation, direction, and temporal frequency representations in both the retina and dLGN boutons. We found modest location-dependent biases in the representation of each feature across visual space for boutons, while such biases were weaker in the retina. dLGN representations emerged from functionally and anatomically defined bouton subsets. Selective ablation of cortical feedback to dLGN modulated feature biases but did not eliminate them. Together, these results suggest that dLGN integrates retinal and cortical inputs to create spatially biased feature maps for V1.