Source of the eye-movement signal reaching real-motion cells.

ABSTRACT

The stability of visual perception despite eye movements suggests the existence in the visual system of neurons able to recognize whether the movement of a retinal image is due to the actual movement of an object or is self-induced by the ocular movement. We found neurons of this type in several areas of the monkey visual cortex and named them "real-motion" cells. Extracellular recordings were carried out from single neurons of the cortical prestriate area V3A of two awake macaque monkeys. Eighty-seven neurons were studied by comparing their responses during stimulus movement across the stationary receptive field, and receptive-field movement across the stationary stimulus. This visual stimulation was presented against a uniform visual background, in darkness or against a textured background. Neurons which were not real-motion in light (45/87) maintained their behaviour in darkness, while about 40% of real-motion cells lost this behaviour in darkness. Both real-motion and non real-motion cells maintained the same behaviour when tested against a uniform or textured visual background but often, texture increased the difference in the response that real-motion cells showed between stimulus and eye movement. These data suggest that the eye-movement signal which reaches real-motion cells and is responsible for their behaviour may be either retinal or extraretinal in nature. This double innervation is in good agreement with perceptual phenomena related to the detection of movement in the visual field.