A Neural Model of Motion Processing and Visual Navigation by Cortical Area MST

[Stephen Grossberg]

The following article can be read at http://cns-web.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg/

A Neural Model of Motion Processing and Visual Navigation by Cortical
Area MST, by Stephen Grossberg, Ennio Mingolla, and Christopher Pack.
Cerebral Cortex, in press

Cells in the dorsal medial superior temporal cortex (MSTd) process optic
flow generated by self-motion during visually-guided navigation. A neural
model shows how interactions between well-known neural
mechanisms (log polar cortical magnification, Gaussian motion-sensitive
receptive fields, spatial pooling of motion-sensitive signals, and
subtractive extraretinal eye movement signals) lead to emergent  properties
that quantitatively simulate neurophysiological data about MSTd cell
properties and  psychophysical data about human navigation. Model cells
match MSTd neuron responses to optic flow
stimuli placed in different parts of the visual field, including position
invariance, tuning curves, preferred spiral directions, direction
reversals, average response curves, and preferred locations
for stimulus motion centers.  The model shows how the preferred motion
direction of the most active MSTd cells can explain human judgments of
self-motion direction (heading), without using complex heading templates.
The model explains when extraretinal eye movement signals are needed for
accurate heading perception, and when retinal input is sufficient, and how
heading judgments depend on scene layouts and rotation rates.