The impact of the serotonergic psychedelic DOI on active vision in freely moving mice.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology October 15, 2025 Rolf J Skyberg, Christopher W Fields, Dylan M Martins et al. preprint
Psychedelics like DOI alter visual perception by increasing how often mice actively sample their visual environment during free movement, yet they reduce the neural responses in the primary visual cortex that these behaviors generate. The effects vary widely across individual neurons and depend on the type of visual input, with stronger suppression of responses to unpredictable stimuli than to predictable ones. This dissociation suggests that predictability of visual events influences how psychedelics disrupt sensory processing, offering insights into the neural basis of altered perceptual states.