The role of the ventral intraparietal area (VIP/pVIP) in parsing optic flow into visual motion caused by self-motion and visual motion produced by object-motion

Field, D. T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4041-8404, Biagi, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7119-0767 and Inman, L. A. (2020) The role of the ventral intraparietal area (VIP/pVIP) in parsing optic flow into visual motion caused by self-motion and visual motion produced by object-motion. NeuroImage, 213. 116679. ISSN 1053-8119 doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116679

Abstract/Summary

Retinal image motion is a composite signal that contains information about two behaviourally significant factors: self-motion and the movement of environmental objects. It is thought that the brain separates the two relevant signals, and although multiple brain regions have been identified that respond selectively to the composite optic flow signal, which brain region(s) perform the parsing process remains unknown. Here, we present original evidence that the putative human ventral intraparietal area (pVIP), a region known to receive optic flow signals as well as independent self-motion signals from other sensory modalities, plays a critical role in the parsing process and acts to isolate object-motion. We localised pVIP using its multisensory response profile, and then tested its relative responses to simulated object-motion and self-motion stimuli; results indicated that responses were much stronger in pVIP to stimuli that specified object-motion. We report two further observations that will be significant for the future direction of research in this area; firstly, activation in pVIP was suppressed by distant stationary objects compared to the absence of objects or closer objects. Secondly, we describe several other brain regions that share with pVIP selectivity for visual object-motion over visual self-motion as well as a multisensory response.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/89479
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Henley Business School > Digitalisation, Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Uncontrolled Keywords	Object-motion, Optic flow, Self-motion, Visual perception, fMRI
Publisher	Elsevier
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