Neural representation of complex motion in the primate cortex
by Benedict Wild
Date of Examination:2021-05-28
Date of issue:2021-11-04
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Stefan Treue
Referee:Prof. Dr. Stefan Treue
Referee:Prof. Dr. Tim Gollisch
Persistent Address:
http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-8913
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Abstract
English
This dissertation is concerned with how information about the environment is represented by neural activity in the primate brain. More specifically, it contains several studies that explore the representation of visual motion in the brains of humans and nonhuman primates through behavioral and physiological measures. The majority of this work is focused on the activity of individual neurons in the medial superior temporal area (MST) – a high-level, extrastriate area of the primate visual cortex. The first two studies provide an extensive review of the scientific literature on area MST. The area’s prominent role at the intersection of low-level, bottom-up, sensory processing and high-level, top-down mechanisms is highlighted. Furthermore, a specific article on how information about self-motion and object motion can be decoded from a population of MSTd neurons is reviewed in more detail. The third study describes a published and annotated dataset of MST neurons’ responses to a series of different motion stimuli. This dataset is analyzed using a variety of different analysis approaches in the fifth study. Classical tuning curve approaches confirm that MST neurons have large, but well-defined spatial receptive fields and are independently tuned for linear and spiral motion, as well as speed. We also confirm that the tuning for spiral motion is position invariant in a majority of MST neurons. A bias-free characterization of receptive field profiles based on a new stimulus that generates smooth, complex motion patterns turned out to be predictive of some of the tuning properties of MST neurons, but was generally less informative than similar approaches have been in earlier visual areas. The fifth study introduces a new motion stimulus that consists of hexgonal segments and presents an optimization algorithm for an adaptive online analysis of neurophysiological recordings. Preliminary physiological data and simulations show these tools to have a strong potential in characterizing the response functions of MST neurons. The final study describes a behavioral experiment with human subjects that explores how different stimulus features, such as size and contrast, affect motion perception and discusses what conclusions can be drawn from that about the representation of visual motion in the human brain. Together these studies highlight the visual motion processing pathway of the primate brain as an excellent model system for studying more complex relations of neural activity and external stimuli. Area MST in particular emerges as a gateway between perception, cognition, and action planning.
Keywords: visual neuroscience; motion perception; extrastriate cortex; macaque; area MST; single cell electrophysiology in non-human primates
