Organismic Neurobiology
Vision Circuits Lab
Neuronal Circuits of Visual Perception
Investigating Coding in Neuronal Circuits of the Visual System
Our research focuses on understanding how neuronal circuits in the visual system encode and process sensory information, and how these processes are shaped by behavioral context. Vision does not occur in isolation — it is tightly embedded within an animal’s ongoing goals, actions, and internal states. Accordingly, we study how visual computations are dynamically modulated by non-visual factors such as motor activity, arousal, and task demands.
To investigate these interactions, we record the activity of local neuronal populations in the visual system of awake, behaving mice using Neuropixels probes, allowing us to measure activity across multiple stages of the visual pathway — including thalamus and cortex. By combining electrophysiological recordings with eye tracking, optogenetic manipulations, and quantitative modeling, we aim to uncover the circuit-level mechanisms that support context-dependent visual processing and adaptive perception. In collaboration with David Keays’ group, we also explore the visual system in pigeons.
Ntsr1-Cre
Methods & Approaches
To investigate visual processing in the context of behavior, we present controlled visual stimuli to mice either while they are head-fixed on a spherical treadmill or freely navigating in a choice arena. Depending on the experimental paradigm, animals are trained either to passively view stimuli or to perform visual discrimination tasks that engage visual perceptual decision-making. Throughout these experiments, we closely monitor eye position and movements, enabling us to precisely relate neural responses to retinal input, internal state and behavior.
We use Neuropixels arrays to record the activity of distributed populations of neurons across different stages of the visual system, such as the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN), thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN), and primary visual cortex (V1). These recordings allow us to analyze how information flows through and is transformed across hierarchical circuits during visual processing. To probe the causal role of specific circuits or cell types, we employ optogenetic tools for temporally precise perturbations of neural activity, allowing us to link circuit function directly to visual processing, perception and action.
Publications
Selected Publications:
* Meyerolbersleben, L.S., Sirota, A.*, Busse, L.* (2025). Anatomically resolved oscillatory bursts reveal dynamic motifs of thalamocortical activity during naturalistic stimulus viewing. Neuron 113, 2196–2214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.03.030 [* shared senior author]
* Crombie, D., Spacek, M.A., Leibold, C.*, and Busse, L.* (2024). Spiking activity in the visual thalamus is coupled to pupil dynamics across temporal scales. PLoS Biology, e3002614. [* shared senior author]
* Spacek, M.A., Crombie*, D., Bauer*, Y., Born*, G., Liu, X., Katzner, S., and Busse, L. (2022). Robust effects of corticothalamic feedback and behavioral state on movie responses in mouse dLGN. ELife 11, e70469. [* shared contributing author]
* Born, G*., Schneider, F.A.*, Erisken, S.*, Klein, A., Mobarhan, M.H., Lao, C.L., Spacek, M.A., Einevoll, G.T., and Busse, L. (2021). Corticothalamic feedback sculpts visual spatial integration in mouse thalamus. Nature Neuroscience 24, 1711–1720. [* shared first author]
* Erisken, S., Vaiceliunaite, A., Jurjut, O., Fiorini, M., Katzner, S., and Busse, L. (2014). Effects of Locomotion Extend throughout the Mouse Early Visual System. Current Biology 24, 2899–2907.
Lab members:
| Name | Title | Tel | Room | Responsibility | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Busse, Laura | Prof. Dr. | busse@biologie.uni-muenchen.de | +49 89 2180 74305 / 74357 | B03.003 | Prinicpal Investigator |
| Katzner, Steffen | Dr. | steffen.katzner@lmu.de | +49 89 2180 74327 | B03.003 | Co-Prinicpal Investigator |
| Sumser, Anton | Dr. | sumser@bio.lmu.de | +49 89 2180 74337 | B03.005 | Post-Doc |
| Sotgia, Melanie | sotgia@bio.lmu.de | +49 89 2180 74361 | C03.039A | Technical Assistant | |
| Kotkat, Ann | Phd Student | ||||
| Li, Hongyu | PhD Student | ||||
| Meyerolbersleben, Lukas | PhD Student | ||||
| Mulaiese, Nancy | nancy.mulaiese@lmu.de | +49 89 2180 74298 | C03.008 | PhD Student | |
| Peterreins, Verena | verena.peterreins@campus.lmu.de | C03.003 | PhD Student |
Open positions:
If you are interested in joining the lab as a doctoral researcher, please apply directly to the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences or the IMPRS-BI.
Are you curious about how the neural circuits in the visual system contribute to visual processing, perception, and behavior? We are inviting applications from motivated Bachelor and Master students to join us for lab rotations and thesis work. Programming skills are necessary. Apply by sending an email to Laura Busse
News:
July 10th, 2025
New publication in Neuron
Viewing the world through the lens of oscillations
Congratulations to Lukas Meyerolbersleben for a fantastic publication co-supervised with Anton Sirota in Neuron (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.03.030) and many thanks to Chockalingam Ramanathan and Julia Veit for writing a comprehensive preview of the work entitled Lights, contrast, action! Disentangling visually induced oscillations (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.06.008)
June 5th, 2025
New publication in iScience
Celebrating our new publication in iScience, in collaboration with Philipp Berens in Tübingen:
Schmors, L., Kotkat, A.H., Bauer, Y., Huang, Z., Crombie, D., Meyerolbersleben, L.S., Sokoloski, S., Berens, P., Busse, L., 2025. Effects of corticothalamic feedback depend on visual responsiveness and stimulus type. iScience 28, 112481.
Congratulations to all authors!
Cooperations
