Mismatch receptive fields in mouse primary visual cortex

In primary visual cortex, a subset of neurons responds when a particular stimulus is encountered in a certain location in visual space. This activity can be modeled using a visual receptive field. In addition to visually driven activity, there are neurons in visual cortex that integrate visual and motor-related input to signal a mismatch between actual and predicted visual flow. Here we show that these mismatch neurons have receptive-fields and signal a local mismatch between actual and predicted visual flow in restricted regions of visual space. These mismatch receptive-fields are aligned to the retinotopic map of visual cortex and are similar in size to visual receptive-fields. Thus, neurons with mismatch receptive fields signal local deviations of actual visual flow from visual flow predicted based on self-motion and could therefore underlie the detection of objects moving relative to the visual flow caused by self-motion.