04 - Processing of visual motion

Topics addressed in the lecture:

motion as a fundamental perceptual dimension
motion as orientation in space-time
the anatomical localization of motion processing
the functional anatomy of area MT
the relationship between a stimulus, the neuronal response to it and the stimulus’ perception

Topics addressed in the seminar:

comparing psychometric and neurometric functions in a motion task
the relationship between the activity of single neurons in area MT and the perception of a moving stimulus
the effect of electrical microstimulation in area MT on perception

Questions you should be able to answer:

draw a space-time plot of a leftward motion
draw a polar plot of the tuning curve of a direction-selective cell, tuned to leftward motion
describe the topographic organization of area MT
what is meant by a neurometric curve and a psychometric curve (see Newsome et al. (1989))?
why is it interesting to compare these two curves?
describe the consequences of microstimulating area MT, as determined by Salzman et al. (1990)
what hypothesis is tested by this microstimulation experiment?

You should know the following terms and concepts after the lecture:

You should know the following terms and concepts after the seminar:

Learning objectives (Lernziele) - Lecture:

Visual motion is a fundamental perceptual dimension.
Visual motion processing in primates is a high-performance system. It generates rich representations of the visual environment, even when only limited data are available (structure-from-motion, biological motion).
Simple visual motions are characterized by two parameters.
Motion can be thoght of as orientation in space-time.
In primates neurons that respond selectively to visual motion do not occur before cortex. They usually encode motion direction through bell-shaped tuning curves.
In visual cortex one of two processing pathways is specialized for visual motion information. Extrastriate area MT has been identified as an area particularly specialized for linear motion precessing. MT shows a topography for motion direction and binocular disparity.
A fundamental question in neuroscience is to elucidate the causal link between a sensory stimulus in the environment and an organism's perception of that stimulus. This has been particularly well investigated for area MT and visual motion perception.

Learning objectives (Lernziele) - Seminar:

A fundamental question in neuroscience is to elucidate the causal link between a sensory stimulus in the environment and an organism's perception of that stimulus. This has been particularly well investigated for area MT and visual motion perception.
Sudies in area MT have revealed a very strong quantitative similarity between psychometric and neurometric curves for motion stimuli in this area.
The strongest evidence for a causal link between the neural activity in area MT and an organism's perception comes from microstimulation experiments in MT.

Topics addressed in the lecture:

Examples for questions you should be able to answer:

Last update of this page: Jan 11, 2019