MULTIMODAL REPRESENTATION OF OPTIC FLOW IN AREA PEc OF MACAQUE MONKEY

作者：Raffi M^*; Carrozzini C; Maioli M G; Squatrito S

来源：Neuroscience, 2010, 171(4): 1241-1255.

DOI：10.1016/j.neuroscience.2010.09.026

• optic flow
• eye position
• visual perception heading perception parietal cortex

The visual perception of self motion is mainly provided by optic flow Eyes usually scan the environment during locomotion, and the gaze is not always directed to the focus of expansion (FOE) of the flow field Such eye movements change the retinal FOE position with respect to the fovea Here, we assess if optic flow selective neurons in parietal area PEc are modulated by eye position We recorded single neuron activity during radial optic flow stimulation in two monkeys, varying eye and retinal FOE positions We found that the majority of PEc neurons are modulated by the FOE retinotopic position with different tuning for expansion and contraction Although many neurons did not show any gaze field without visual stimulation, the eye position modulated optic flow responses in about half of the cells These novel results suggest that PEc neurons integrate both visual and eye position signals, and allow us to hypothesize their role in guiding locomotion as a part of a cortical network involved in FOE representation during self motion Visual and eye positio

• 出版日期2010-12-29