The Krishnaswamy Lab seeks to understand how the brain perceives and reacts to salient stimuli. We study this issue in the mouse visual system and our work is organized along three axes: (1) We investigate the architecture that endows early visual circuitry with abilities to extract visual information; (2) We study how this encoded information is modified when the brain attends; and (3) We study how neurodevelopmental and degenerative conditions impair visual function.