Sensory versus motor loci for integration of multiple motion signals in smooth pursuit eye movements and human motion perception

Abstract

We have investigated how visual motion signals are integrated for smooth pursuit eye movements by measuring the initiation of pursuit in monkeys for pairs of moving stimuli of the same or differing luminance. The initiation of pursuit for pairs of stimuli of the same luminance could be accounted for as a vector average of the responses to the two stimuli singly. When stimuli comprised two superimposed patches of moving dot textures, the brighter stimulus suppressed the inputs from the dimmer stimulus, so that the initiation of pursuit became winner-take-all when the luminance ratio of the two stimuli was 8 or greater. The dominance of the brighter stimulus could be not attributed to either the latency difference or the ratio of the eye accelerations for the bright and dim stimuli presented singly. When stimuli comprised either spot targets or two patches of dots moving across separate locations in the visual field, the brighter stimulus had a much weaker suppressive influence; the initiation of pursuit could be accounted for by nearly equal vector averaging of the responses to the two stimuli singly. The suppressive effects of the brighter stimulus also appeared in human perceptual judgments, but again only for superimposed stimuli. We conclude that one locus of the interaction of two moving visual stimuli is shared by perception and action and resides in local inhibitory connections in the visual cortex. A second locus resides deeper in sensory-motor processing and may be more closely related to action selection than to stimulus selection.