Given that cortical malfunctions have been suggested as the cause of sensory differences in autism [15–17] and that the visual cortex has been shown to modulate the response magnitude of looming sensitive cells in the SC [30], we tested whether the behavioural responses are affected in cortex and hippocampus-specific conditional Setd5 animals (Setd5+/fl; Emx1-Cre, S2 Fig). This evidence concerns the gene EMX1 and autism.