My colleagues in the @tobiasbonhoeffer.bsky.social department baked a mouse OD columns cake ❤️❤️

And here the rotating version of the image (1b/7)

What else? Well, in larger mammals, the spatial arrangement of ocular dominance is related to the retinotopic and other feature maps. Interestingly, in mice we could not detect such relationships. (6/7)

Moreover, the clusters we identified in layer 4 extended vertically into layers 2/3 and 5, forming a columnar organization. (5/7)

We identified the location of these ipsi-patches using a clustering algorithm. But did the data just “type out Shakespeare” by chance? No, neither randomized nor simulated data showed similar spatial distributions for ocular dominance. (4/7)

As expected, there was a retinotopic map, but to our surprise, when we inspected the ‘visual response maps’ we also observed clear patches with mostly ipsilateral eye driven responses in layer 4. (3/7)

How did we find them? Using 2-photon microscopy, we mapped functional properties like retinotopy, orientation tuning, and ocular dominance across a large part of the mouse visual cortex. (2/7)

Can the mouse visual cortex harbor a functional organization for stimulus features? TLDR: Yes, we found ocular dominance columns in this tiny cortical region! Check our paper, open access in @naturecomms.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... and/or read the 🧵 below. @mpiforbi.bsky.social (1/7)

Moment of zen 🏔️🌞

It is spring when nature doesn’t know anymore where not to flower

Winterwonderland 🤩