| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1 Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA
2 Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Section of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: khbritten{at}ucdavis.edu.
The medial superior temporal area of extrastriate cortex (MST) contains signals selective for non-uniform patterns of motion often termed optic flow. The presence of such tuning, however, does not necessarily imply involvement in perception. To quantify the relationship between these selective neuronal signals and the perception of optic flow, we designed a discrimination task that allowed us to simultaneously record neuronal and behavioral sensitivities to near-threshold optic flow stimuli tailored to MST cells' preferences. In this two-alternative forced-choice task, we controlled the salience of globally opposite patterns (e.g., expansion and contraction) by varying the coherence of the motion. Using these stimuli, we could both relate the sensitivity of neuronal signals in MST to the animal's behavioral sensitivity, and also measure trial-by-trial correlation between neuronal signals and behavioral choices. Neurons in MST showed a wide range of sensitivities to these complex motion stimuli. Many neurons had sensitivities equal or superior to the monkey's threshold. On the other hand, trial-by-trial correlation between neuronal discharge and choice (choice probability) was weak or nonexistent in our data. Together, these results lead us to conclude that MST contains sufficient information for threshold judgments of optic flow; however, the role of MST activity in optic flow discriminations may be less direct than in other visual motion tasks previously described by other laboratories.
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  K. Takahashi, Y. Gu, P. J. May, S. D. Newlands, G. C. DeAngelis, and D. E. Angelaki Multimodal Coding of Three-Dimensional Rotation and Translation in Area MSTd: Comparison of Visual and Vestibular Selectivity J. Neurosci., September 5, 2007; 27(36): 9742 - 9756. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 H. W. Heuer and K. H. Britten Linear Responses to Stochastic Motion Signals in Area MST J Neurophysiol, September 1, 2007; 98(3): 1115 - 1124. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
C. Palmer, S.-Y. Cheng, and E. Seidemann Linking Neuronal and Behavioral Performance in a Reaction-Time Visual Detection Task J. Neurosci., July 25, 2007; 27(30): 8122 - 8137. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
U. J. Ilg and S. Schumann Primate Area MST-l Is Involved in the Generation of Goal-Directed Eye and Hand Movements J Neurophysiol, January 1, 2007; 97(1): 761 - 771. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH |
| Visit Other APS Journals Online |
