Visual evidence accumulation guides decision-making in unrestrained mice.

The ability to manipulate neural activity with precision is an asset in uncovering neural circuits for decision-making. Diverse tools for manipulating neurons are available for mice, but their feasibility remains unclear, especially when decisions require accumulating visual evidence. For example, whether mice' decisions reflect leaky accumulation is unknown, as are the relevant/irrelevant factors that influence decisions. Further, causal circuits for visual evidence accumulation are poorly understood. To address this, we measured decisions in mice judging the fluctuating rate of a flash sequence. An initial analysis (>500,000 trials, 29 male and female mice) demonstrated that information throughout the 1000 ms trial influenced choice, with early information most influential. This suggests that information persists in neural circuits for similar to 1000 ms with minimal accumulation leak. Next, in a subset of animals, we probed strategy more extensively and found that although animals were influenced by stimulus rate, they were unable to entirely suppress the influence of stimulus brightness. Finally, we identified anteromedial (AM) visual area via retinotopic mapping and optogenetically inhibited it using JAWS. Light activation biased choices in both injected and uninjected animals, demonstrating that light alone influences behavior. By varying stimulus-response contingency while holding stimulated hemisphere constant, we surmounted this obstacle to demonstrate that AM suppression biases decisions. By leveraging a large dataset to quantitatively characterize decision-making behavior, we establish mice as suitable for neural circuit manipulation studies. Further, by demonstrating that mice accumulate visual evidence, we demonstrate that this strategy for reducing uncertainty in decision-making is used by animals with diverse visual systems.