# Cortical visual processing for navigation

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA · 2024 · $1,025,362

## Abstract

Project summary
Vision plays a key role in our ability to navigate through the environment, from identifying landmarks and obstacles
to determining location and heading. While studies of visual cortex have provided an understanding of properties
such as orientation selectivity and object recognition, much less is known about how cortical circuitry extracts
and processes features from the visual scene to support navigation. In particular, there are two challenges. First,
the nature of the visual stimulus is dramatically different in navigation, where the subject's movement through
the world creates a complex and dynamic visual input, in contrast to standard synthetic stimuli presented to
stationary subjects. Second, the types of visual features and computations that must be performed are different
in navigation than in standard detection or discrimination paradigms. Our goal in this proposal is to determine
how the brain extracts relevant visual features from the rich, dynamic visual input that typifies active exploration,
and investigate how the neural representation of these features can support visual navigation.
 We will investigate this through three parallel aims, that build up from the representation of the visual scene
in V1 during freely moving navigation, to the computation of specific variables needed for navigation. In our first
aim, we will measure the visual input in freely moving mice using miniature head-mounted cameras, together with
neural activity in V1, to determine how neural dynamics represent the visual scene during natural navigation. In
our second aim, we will use large field-of-view two-photon imaging of multiple cortical areas, while mice navigate
in a naturalistic open-world virtual reality system, to determine how visual features are represented across visual
cortical areas. In our third aim, we will use 2-photon imaging in mice in a rotational arena to determine how visual
input is used to dynamically update a key navigational variable: heading direction. Together, this project bridges
foundational measurements in freely moving animals with mechanistic circuit investigations, to provide insights
into an important aspect of visual system function.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10795723
- **Project number:** 4R01NS121919-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA
- **Principal Investigator:** Michael Goard
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $1,025,362
- **Award type:** 4N
- **Project period:** 2021-04-15 → 2026-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10795723

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10795723, Cortical visual processing for navigation (4R01NS121919-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10795723. Licensed CC0.

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