How To Use Non-Visual Information for Optic Flow Processing in Monkey Visual Cortical Area MSTd

Abstract

Area MSTd, part of the visual motion pathway in monkey cortex, contains cells that respond selectively to various large-field, random-dot, optic flow patterns [2] [9] [12]. It receives major input from area MT which contains cells directionally selective for local motions. An earlier network model proposes a way to achieve the visual response properties of MSTd neurons from the output of MT -like neurons [5] and links these properties to the psychophysics of human heading detection from optic flow [6] [7]. However, human heading detection has been shown to sometimes depend on non-visual eye movement information [11] [13] [14], and area MSTd has been found to contain extraretinal eye movement [8] as well as eye position [1] information.