Planning Movements in Visual and Physical Space in Monkey Posterior Parietal Cortex.

Neurons in the posterior parietal cortex respond selectively for spatial parameters of planned goal-directed movements. Yet, it is still unclear which aspects of the movement the neurons encode: the spatial parameters of the upcoming physical movement (physical goal), or the upcoming visual limb movement (visual goal). To test this, we recorded neuronal activity from the parietal reach region while monkeys planned reaches under either normal or prism-reversed viewing conditions. We found predominant encoding of physical goals while fewer neurons were selective for visual goals during planning. In contrast, local field potentials recorded in the same brain region exhibited predominant visual goal encoding, similar to previous imaging data from humans. The visual goal encoding in individual neurons was neither related to immediate visual input nor to visual memory, but to the future visual movement. Our finding suggests that action planning in parietal cortex is not exclusively a precursor of impending physical movements, as reflected by the predominant physical goal encoding, but also contains spatial kinematic parameters of upcoming visual movement, as reflected by co-existing visual goal encoding in neuronal spiking. The co-existence of visual and physical goals adds a complementary perspective to the current understanding of parietal spatial computations in primates.

Asymmetric generalization in adaptation to target displacement errors in humans and in a neural network model.

Different error signals can induce sensorimotor adaptation during visually guided reaching, possibly evoking different neural adaptation mechanisms. Here we investigate reach adaptation induced by visual target errors without perturbing the actual or sensed hand position. We analyzed the spatial generalization of adaptation to target error to compare it with other known generalization patterns and simulated our results with a neural network model trained to minimize target error independent of prediction errors. Subjects reached to different peripheral visual targets and had to adapt to a sudden fixed-amplitude displacement ("jump") consistently occurring for only one of the reach targets. Subjects simultaneously had to perform contralateral unperturbed saccades, which rendered the reach target jump unnoticeable. As a result, subjects adapted by gradually decreasing reach errors and showed negative aftereffects for the perturbed reach target. Reach errors generalized to unperturbed targets according to a translational rather than rotational generalization pattern, but locally, not globally. More importantly, reach errors generalized asymmetrically with a skewed generalization function in the direction of the target jump. Our neural network model reproduced the skewed generalization after adaptation to target jump without having been explicitly trained to produce a specific generalization pattern. Our combined psychophysical and simulation results suggest that target jump adaptation in reaching can be explained by gradual updating of spatial motor goal representations in sensorimotor association networks, independent of learning induced by a prediction-error about the hand position. The simulations make testable predictions about the underlying changes in the tuning of sensorimotor neurons during target jump adaptation.

Generalised exponential-Gaussian distribution: a method for neural reaction time analysis.

Reaction times (RTs) are an essential metric used for understanding the link between brain and behaviour. As research is reaffirming the tight coupling between neuronal and behavioural RTs, thorough statistical modelling of RT data is thus essential to enrich current theories and motivate novel findings. A statistical distribution is proposed herein that is able to model the complete RT's distribution, including location, scale and shape: the generalised-exponential-Gaussian (GEG) distribution. The GEG distribution enables shifting the attention from traditional means and standard deviations to the entire RT distribution. The mathematical properties of the GEG distribution are presented and investigated via simulations. Additionally, the GEG distribution is featured via four real-life data sets. Finally, we discuss how the proposed distribution can be used for regression analyses via generalised additive models for location, scale and shape (GAMLSS).

Adaptive heading performance during self-motion perception.

Previous studies have documented that the perception of self-motion direction can be extracted from the patterns of image motion on the retina (also termed optic flow). Self-motion perception remains stable even when the optic-flow information is distorted by concurrent gaze shifts from body/eye rotations. This has been interpreted that extraretinal signals-efference copies of eye/body movements-are involved in compensating for retinal distortions. Here, we tested an alternative hypothesis to the extraretinal interpretation. We hypothesized that accurate self-motion perception can be achieved from a purely optic-flow-based visual strategy acquired through experience, independent of extraretinal mechanism. To test this, we asked human subjects to perform a self-motion direction discrimination task under normal optic flow (fixation condition) or distorted optic flow resulted from either realistic (pursuit condition) or simulated (simulated condition) eye movements. The task was performed either without (pre- and posttraining) or with (during training) the feedback about the correct answer. We first replicated the previous observation that before training, direction perception was greatly impaired in the simulated condition where the optic flow was distorted and extraretinal eye movement signals were absent. We further showed that after a few training sessions, the initial impairment in direction perception was gradually improved. These results reveal that behavioral training can enforce the exploitation of retinal cues to compensate for the distortion, without the contribution from the extraretinal signals. Our results suggest that self-motion perception is a flexible and adaptive process which might depend on neural plasticity in relevant cortical areas.

Dissociating Sensory and Cognitive Biases in Human Perceptual Decision-Making: A Re-evaluation of Evidence From Reference Repulsion.

Our perception of the world is governed by a combination of bottom-up sensory and top-down cognitive processes. This often begs the question whether a perceptual phenomenon originates from sensory or cognitive processes in the brain. For instance, reference repulsion, a compelling visual illusion in which the subjective estimates about the direction of a motion stimulus are biased away from a reference boundary, is previously thought to be originated at the sensory level. Recent studies, however, suggest that the misperception is not sensory in nature but rather reflects post-perceptual cognitive biases. Here I challenge the post-perceptual interpretations on both empirical and conceptual grounds. I argue that these new findings are not incompatible with the sensory account and can be more parsimoniously explained as reflecting the consequences of motion representations in different reference frames. Finally, I will propose one concrete experiment with testable predictions to shed more insights on the sensory vs. cognitive nature of this visual illusion.

Is reaction time an index of white matter connectivity during training?

Voelker et al. (this issue) discuss the idea of linking white matter (WM) plasticity to improved reaction time (RT) during training. While compelling, this argument has important confounds and should be taken with cautions. RT is constrained not only by the speed of signal transmission in WM, but also by the properties of synaptic and neural processing in cortical gray matter. It is still unclear to what extent RT variability could be explained by WM plasticity and cortical plasticity. Future studies should examine both WM plasticity and cortical plasticity in relation to RT changes, to fully understand the brain mechanisms underlying RT improvement during training.

Where are you heading? Flexible integration of retinal and extra-retinal cues during self-motion perception.

As we move forward in the environment, we experience a radial expansion of the retinal image, wherein the center corresponds to the instantaneous direction of self-motion. Humans can precisely perceive their heading direction even when the retinal motion is distorted by gaze shifts due to eye/body rotations. Previous studies have suggested that both retinal and extra-retinal strategies can compensate for the retinal image distortion. However, the relative contributions of each strategy remain unclear. To address this issue, we devised a two-alternative-headings discrimination task, in which participants had either real or simulated pursuit eye movements. The two conditions had the same retinal input but either with or without extra-retinal eye movement signals. Thus, the behavioral difference between conditions served as a metric of extra-retinal contribution. We systematically and independently manipulated pursuit speed, heading speed, and the reliability of retinal signals. We found that the levels of extra-retinal contributions increased with increasing pursuit speed (stronger extra-retinal signal), and with decreasing heading speed (weaker retinal signal). In addition, extra-retinal contributions also increased as we corrupted retinal signals with noise. Our results revealed that the relative magnitude of retinal and extra-retinal contributions was not fixed but rather flexibly adjusted to each specific task condition. This task-dependent, flexible integration appears to take the form of a reliability-based weighting scheme that maximizes heading performance.

Distinct Aging Effects on Motion Repulsion and Surround Suppression in Humans.

Elderly exhibit accumulating deficits in visual motion perception, which is critical for humans to interact with their environment. Previous studies have suggested that aging generally reduces neuronal inhibition in the visual system. Here, we investigated how aging affects the local intra-cortical inhibition using a motion direction discrimination task based on the motion repulsion phenomenon. Motion repulsion refers to the phenomenon by which observers overestimate the perceived angle when two superimposed dot patterns are moving at an acute angle. The misperception has been interpreted as local mutual inhibition between nearby direction-tuned neurons within the same cortical area. We found that elderly exhibited much stronger motion repulsion than young adults. We then compared this effect to how aging affects the global inter-cortical inhibition by adopting the surround suppression paradigm previously used by Betts et al. (2005). We found that elderly showed less change in the discrimination threshold when the size of a high-contrast drifting Gabor was increased, indicating reduced surround suppression compared to young adults. Our results indicate that aging may not always lead to a decrease of neuronal inhibition in the visual system. These distinct effects of aging on inhibitory functions might be one of the reasons that elderly people often exhibit deficits of motion perception in a real-world situation.

Two Polarities of Attention in Social Contexts: From Attending-to-Others to Attending-to-Self.

Social attention is one special form of attention that involves the allocation of limited processing resources in a social context. Previous studies on social attention often regard how attention is directed toward socially relevant stimuli such as faces and gaze directions of other individuals. In contrast to attending-to-others, a different line of researches has shown that self-related information such as own face and name automatically captures attention and is preferentially processed comparing to other-related information. These contrasting behavioral effects between attending-to-others and attending-to-self prompt me to consider a synthetic viewpoint for understanding social attention. I propose that social attention operates at two polarizing states: In one extreme, individual tends to attend to the self and prioritize self-related information over others', and, in the other extreme, attention is allocated to other individuals to infer their intentions and desires. Attending-to-self and attending-to-others mark the two ends of an otherwise continuum spectrum of social attention. For a given behavioral context, the mechanisms underlying these two polarities will interact and compete with each other in order to determine a saliency map of social attention that guides our behaviors. An imbalanced competition between these two behavioral and cognitive processes will cause cognitive disorders and neurological symptoms such as autism spectrum disorders and Williams syndrome. I have reviewed both behavioral and neural evidence that support the notion of polarized social attention, and have suggested several testable predictions to corroborate this integrative theory for understanding social attention.

When adaptive control fails: Slow recovery of reduced rapid online control during reaching under reversed vision.

Previous studies have shown that short-term exposure to mirror-reversed visual feedback suppresses rapid online control (ROC) of arm movements in response to a sudden target displacement. Here we tested if the reduced ROC under reversed vision can be observed for natural reaches without target perturbations, i.e. without corrective movements that are driven by visual input perturbation. Second, we ask if such ROC reduction generalizes to movement phases without visual feedback of the hand. Subjects were instructed to perform simple reach movements towards a stationary target position either under normal or physically reversed vision of the hand during the late movement phase. We quantified time-resolved ROC via a coefficient of determination of the reach trajectories over the full course of the movement. As for other measures in previous studies, we found that our perturbation-independent ROC was reduced within a few trials after exposure to reversed visual feedback. The reduced ROC was restricted to late movement phases, and was not observed in early movement phases. We further asked if subjects would be able to re-gain ROC with prolonged exposure to the reversed visual input. ROC gradually and incompletely increased over the course of 400 exposure trials, affecting both early and late movement phases. Our results show that under reversed vision ROC is reduced even for perturbation-independent natural reaches aiming at stationary targets.

Smelling directions: olfaction modulates ambiguous visual motion perception.

Senses of smells are often accompanied by simultaneous visual sensations. Previous studies have documented enhanced olfactory performance with concurrent presence of congruent color- or shape- related visual cues, and facilitated visual object perception when congruent smells are simultaneously present. These visual object-olfaction interactions suggest the existences of couplings between the olfactory pathway and the visual ventral processing stream. However, it is not known if olfaction can modulate visual motion perception, a function that is related to the visual dorsal stream. We tested this possibility by examining the influence of olfactory cues on the perceptions of ambiguous visual motion signals. We showed that, after introducing an association between motion directions and olfactory cues, olfaction could indeed bias ambiguous visual motion perceptions. Our result that olfaction modulates visual motion processing adds to the current knowledge of cross-modal interactions and implies a possible functional linkage between the olfactory system and the visual dorsal pathway.