A primary sensory cortical interareal feedforward inhibitory circuit for tacto-visual integration.

Tactile sensation and vision are often both utilized for the exploration of objects that are within reach though it is not known whether or how these two distinct sensory systems combine such information. Here in mice, we used a combination of stereo photogrammetry for 3D reconstruction of the whisker array, brain-wide anatomical tracing and functional connectivity analysis to explore the possibility of tacto-visual convergence in sensory space and within the circuitry of the primary visual cortex (VISp). Strikingly, we find that stimulation of the contralateral whisker array suppresses visually evoked activity in a tacto-visual sub-region of VISp whose visual space representation closely overlaps with the whisker search space.