Single neurons and the perception of visual motion

Newsome, William T, Britten, Kenneth H, Movshon, J Anthony and Shadlen, Michael N.

Published in Neural mechanisms of visual perception. Proceedings of the Retina Research Foundation Symposium, vol.2 pp. 171--192, 1989.

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    • The middle temporal area (MT) of primates is a cortical visual area that plays a prominent role in the analysis of visual motion. We have examined the relationship between the responses of MT neurons and motion perception by conducting electrophysiological recordings as a rhesus monkey performed a direction discrimination task near the limits of performance. Using a signal detection analysis of the neuronal responses, we found that the sensitivity of many MT neurons to the motion signals in our stimuli equaled or exceeded the monkey's psychophysical sensitivity. For some neurons, we also observed a trial-by-trial relationship between the intensity of the neuron's response and the perceptual judgment made by the monkey. When considered together with a previous lesion study, these results suggest that perceptual decisions in this task are based in a relatively direct manner on the directional information encoded by MT neurons.
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