The role of spatial attention for visual perception has been thoroughly studied in primates, but less so in mice. Several behavioral tasks in mice reveal spatial attentional effects, with similarities to observations in primates. Pairing these tasks with large-scale, cell-type-specific techniques could enable deeper access to underlying mechanisms, and help define the utility and limitations of resolving attentional effects on visual perception and neural activity in mice. In this Review, we evaluate behavioral and neural evidence for visual spatial attention in mice; assess how specializations of the mouse visual system and behavioral repertoire impact interpretation of spatial attentional effects; and outline how several measurement and manipulation techniques in mice could precisely test and refine models of attentional modulation across scales.

空间注意力对视觉感知的作用已经在灵长类动物中得到了深入研究，但在小鼠中的研究较少。小鼠的一些行为任务揭示了空间注意力效应，与灵长类动物的观察结果相似。将这些任务与大规模的细胞类型特异性技术相结合，可以更深入地了解潜在机制，并有助于确定解决小鼠视觉感知和神经活动注意力影响的效用和局限性。在这篇综述中，我们评估了小鼠视觉空间注意力的行为和神经证据；评估小鼠视觉系统和行为能力的专业化如何影响空间注意力效应的解释；并概述了几种小鼠测量和操作技术如何精确测试和完善跨尺度的注意力调节模型。