Abstract:In order to explore the cognitive effects of rats on natural images and the fear information coding mechanism of superior colliculus (SC) neurons in natural image cognition. The conditional fear connection training method was used to design an experimental scheme based on natural images of three different emotional attributes (fear: "snake", neutral: "tree", reward: "rat food"). And the rats were trained in visual cognition. Firstly, the cognitive effects of rats on natural images with different emotional meanings were analyzed from behavioristics. Secondly, the first spike latency (FSL) and Spike mean firing rate were used to study the coding mechanism of fear information in rat superior colliculus neurons in the process of natural image cognitive learning. The results showed that the correct decision rate of reward, fear and neutral images in rats reached 75% baseline on the 6th, 22nd and 26th day, respectively. After training, under the stimulation of the fear image, the average FSL value of the rat superior colliculus neuron cluster was significantly lower than that before training, and the Spike mean firing rate of the neuron cluster was significantly increased. These results revealed that the superior colliculus can be activated by fear information, and the fear information can be rapidly transmitted and characterized through the SC brain region.