⚙
AI-generated deep summary
by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-04
· read from full text
ⓘ
This paper studied how freely moving mice use vision during an obstacle-avoidance task that required steering around an obstacle blocking a goal, comparing performance in light versus dark conditions and testing the effect of occluding one eye. The authors found that mice clearly use vision to avoid the obstacle and generate more spatially efficient, directed trajectories toward the open edge, with large orienting head movements occurring at distances where tactile information would not be available. A major limitation noted implicitly by the design is that the work is focused on behavior in a controlled laboratory task and does not directly map neural circuitry beyond proposing it as future work. The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.
Abstract
In natural environments, animals must effectively maneuver around obstacles to reach goals such as food or shelter. Recent work has demonstrated that laboratory mice use vision for naturalistic behavior such as prey capture, escape, and distance estimation. However, it is unknown to what extent mice use vision relative to other senses such as touch for obstacle avoidance, a critical natural behavior. In this study we developed an obstacle avoidance task in freely moving mice to investigate how vision is used to guide paths around an obstacle obstructing a goal. We found that mice clearly use vision to avoid an obstacle, steering around the obstacle at distances where tactile information isn’t available. By comparing trajectories for mice performing obstacle avoidance in the light versus the dark, we found that vision contributes to more spatially efficient trajectories and paths directed to the open edge of the obstacle. When vision is available, mice make large orienting movements towards the opening of the obstacle at about 10 cm from its edge, suggesting that mice are actively using visual information to direct these movements. Finally, by occluding one eye, we found that mice were still able to avoid obstacles with primarily monocular information. Taken together, these results demonstrate that laboratory mice use vision to avoid an obstacle, taking directed paths that are initiated by large orienting movements. In addition to demonstrating the visual behavioral capabilities of the mouse, this paradigm can serve as a foundation to study the neural circuits that mediate visually guided orienting and locomotion. Highlights We developed a simple obstacle avoidance task for freely moving mice that requires minimal training Vision is necessary for efficient and directed paths around an obstacle Mice steer around obstacles by performing directed head movements towards clear paths Mice do not require binocular vision for obstacle avoidance
Full text
2,056 characters
· extracted from
oa-doi-fallback
· click to expand
Abstract
In natural environments, animals must effectively maneuver around obstacles to reach goals such as food or shelter. Recent work has demonstrated that laboratory mice use vision for naturalistic behavior such as prey capture, escape, and distance estimation. However, it is unknown to what extent mice use vision relative to other senses such as touch for obstacle avoidance, a critical natural behavior. In this study we developed an obstacle avoidance task in freely moving mice to investigate how vision is used to guide paths around an obstacle obstructing a goal. We found that mice clearly use vision to avoid an obstacle, steering around the obstacle at distances where tactile information isn’t available. By comparing trajectories for mice performing obstacle avoidance in the light versus the dark, we found that vision contributes to more spatially efficient trajectories and paths directed to the open edge of the obstacle. When vision is available, mice make large orienting movements towards the opening of the obstacle at about 10 cm from its edge, suggesting that mice are actively using visual information to direct these movements. Finally, by occluding one eye, we found that mice were still able to avoid obstacles with primarily monocular information. Taken together, these results demonstrate that laboratory mice use vision to avoid an obstacle, taking directed paths that are initiated by large orienting movements. In addition to demonstrating the visual behavioral capabilities of the mouse, this paradigm can serve as a foundation to study the neural circuits that mediate visually guided orienting and locomotion.
Highlights
We developed a simple obstacle avoidance task for freely moving mice that requires minimal training
Vision is necessary for efficient and directed paths around an obstacle
Mice steer around obstacles by performing directed head movements towards clear paths
Mice do not require binocular vision for obstacle avoidance
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below.
Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure
cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can
have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy
(via DOI)
is the canonical version.