The Allen Brain Observatory presents its inaugural dataset, allowing for quantitative exploration of the functional
properties that underlie coding of sensory stimuli through the visual pathway, at both the single-cell and
population level. The characterization of visually evoked cellular responses is carried out using in vivo
calcium imaging from GCaMP6-expressing neurons measured from selected brain areas, cortical layers, and Cre lines.
The activated calcium responses that are quantitated during the presentation of short movie clips provide data to
help characterize individual cellular and cell population responses to complex visual stimuli in the visual cortex.
Visual Stimulus: Natural Movies
The use of short movie clips allows exploration of the cellular response to streaming visual stimuli. Two 30 second
clips and one 120 second clip from the opening scene of Touch of Evil (Zugsmith & Welles, 1958) have been
incorporated into a visual stimulus presentation series. Each movie clip is presented 10 times in a trial.
1 second (Touch of Evil)
1 second (Touch of Evil)
1 second (Touch of Evil)
Evaluating cellular responses to the Natural Movies visual stimulus: Simplifying data display
The response to the natural movie stimulus is displayed in the "Track" plot. Each ring represents a single trial of
the movie, starting at the top and proceeding clockwise around the circle. The intensity of cellular response is
represented as a heatmap, sampled in one second intervals. The ten trials are surrounded by the mean response, showing
the average response across all 10 trials, represented in in the outer-most blue ring.
Hover your mouse over the Track plot to see the stimulus