CORTICAL INPUTS TO THE LATERAL SUPERIOR COLLICULUS ADAPT THE TACTILE ORIENTING RESPONSE

Many of our actions are directed by innate behaviors -- instinctual responses to specific stimuli in the environment which are not acquired through conscious thought or decision-making processes. While innate behaviors are essential for the functioning of organisms, they naturally tend to make animal behaviors inflexible. Thus, in mammals the magnitude and duration of these actions also depend on stimulus salience within a given behavioral context. The superior colliculus (SC) is a midbrain structure critical for sensorimotor integration and is classically associated with reflexive orienting responses to salient stimuli. Here, we examine in mice how orienting responses generated by the lateral superior colliculus (lSC) in response to whisker input are modulated by whisker-related cortical inputs from barrel cortex (BC) and motor cortex (MC). We hypothesize that these cortical inputs enable adaptive modulation of lSC activity, allowing prior sensory context to shape the magnitude of subsequent orienting responses. Using whisker stimulation to evoke tactile-driven orientation, we identify a cortico-collicular circuit linking whisker touch processing to orienting behavior and highlight the lateral superior colliculus as a key integrative node for cortical modulation of tactile-guided action.