Visual spatial detection is an essential early step in vision, guiding decisions and actions. Yet its neural basis in freely moving animals is still unclear, because controlling visual input and tracking eye and head position is challenging. Studies in head‑fixed mice have shown that both the superior colliculus (SC) and primary visual cortex (V1) support visual spatial detection, but how they contribute in freely moving animals is poorly understood.

Previously we developed open-source methods to track eye and head position in unrestrained mice (Meyer et al., 2018, 2020), to help study the role of different brain regions in complex visually-guided behaviours and investigate “vision on the move”.

I will present recent work in our lab where we further extended these tools and developed an approach to study visual detection in unrestrained mice, combining closed‑loop visual stimulation, neural recordings and optogenetics in V1 and SC, and simultaneous eye‑ and head‑tracking (Jisoo Kim, Riccardo Beltramo, Jasper Poort, Current Biology 2026). We found that SC neurons predict reaction times better than V1 neurons and show more sustained responses during detection. Inhibiting either SC or V1 activity disrupts visual detection, but SC inhibition produces stronger deficits. These findings reveal distinct activity patterns in SC and V1 and help clarify their roles in visual spatial detection.