ArticleNature neuroscience2013
Fast modulation of visual perception by basal forebrain cholinergic neurons.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 339 papers.
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Who cites it
339 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effect of muscarinic blockade on the speed of attention shifting, read-out delays and learning.Psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation improves sensory performance in humans: a randomized controlled crossover pilot study.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Serotonin biology as a basis for explaining psychedelic drug action.Current biology : CB · 2026Review
- Article
- Whole-brain cholinergic modulation following computerized cognitive training in healthy older adults: a [18F]FEOBV PET study.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Learning how to experience the world: From circuits to cell types to genes.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Striatal control of amygdalar acetylcholine release during salience-associated processing.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sensory-to-motor transformations: From serial pipelines to dynamic, distributed processes.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Spontaneous and stimulus-driven arousal produce distinct acetylcholine dynamics across sensory and prefrontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Quantitative anatomy and biophysical modeling of ascending neuromodulatory systems in the developing rat neocortex.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- A lifespan staging model of basal forebrain cholinergic vulnerability.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Review
- A specific basal forebrain-medial prefrontal cholinergic pathway improves attentional control in male mice.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A brain-wide, trial- and time-dependent deterministic drive synergizes with within-trial noise to time self-initiated actions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Rapid dynamics of dorsal raphe serotonin neurons regulate the strength of visual attention.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Sensory encoding and memory retrieval are coordinated with propagating waves in the human brain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Contribution of the Locus Ceruleus-Norepinephrine System to the Coupling between Pupil-Linked Arousal and Cortical State.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Glutamatergic projection neurons in the basal forebrain underlie learned olfactory associational valence assignments.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Layer 6 is a hub for cholinergic modulation in the mouse auditory cortex.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Adults with Down syndrome display altered entrainment of occipital cortical neurons.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Dysfunctional neural dynamics associated with sensory phenotypes in Fragile X syndrome: insights from mouse models.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Review
279 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
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Abstract
The basal forebrain provides the primary source of cholinergic input to the cortex, and it has a crucial function in promoting wakefulness and arousal. However, whether rapid changes in basal forebrain neuron spiking in awake animals can dynamically influence sensory perception is unclear. Here we show that basal forebrain cholinergic neurons rapidly regulate cortical activity and visual perception in awake, behaving mice. Optogenetic activation of the cholinergic neurons or their V1 axon terminals improved performance of a visual discrimination task on a trial-by-trial basis. In V1, basal forebrain activation enhanced visual responses and desynchronized neuronal spiking; these changes could partly account for the behavioral improvement. Conversely, optogenetic basal forebrain inactivation decreased behavioral performance, synchronized cortical activity and impaired visual responses, indicating the importance of cholinergic activity in normal visual processing. These results underscore the causal role of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in fast, bidirectional modulation of cortical processing and sensory perception.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.