A classical experiment in the 1960s showed cats reared with normal visual experience but without visuomotor coupling fail to perform simple visually guided behaviors, suggesting sensory-guided behaviors rely on a mechanism to integrate sensory input and motor output that is instructed by experience. Replicating the classical paradigm using a virtual reality environment for mice, we found that responses to a mismatch between actual and expected visual input occurred only in mice that experienced normal visuomotor coupling.
　These mismatch responses can be explained by a relief from visually driven inhibition in a simple circuit model. Taken together, we show that functional development of visual processing is shaped by visuomotor experience, and our results are consistent with a predictive processing account of cortical function.