Predictions to motion stimuli in human early visual cortex: Effects of motion displacement on motion predictability

W. Schellekens*, N. F. Ramsey, M. Raemaekers

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Recently, several studies showed that fMRI BOLD responses to moving random dot stimuli are enhanced at the location of dot appearance, i.e., the motion trailing edge. Possibly, BOLD activity in human visual cortex reflects predictability of visual motion input. In the current study, we investigate to what extent fMRI BOLD responses reflect estimated predictions to visual motion. We varied motion displacement parameters (duration and velocity), while measuring BOLD amplitudes as a function of distance from the trailing edge. We have found that for all stimulus configurations, BOLD signals decrease with increasing distance from the trailing edge. This finding indicates that neural activity directly reflects the predictability of moving dots, rather than their appearance within classical receptive fields. However, different motion displacement parameters exerted only marginal effects on predictability, suggesting that early visual cortex does not literally predict motion trajectories. Rather, the results reveal a heuristic mechanism of motion suppression from trailing to leading edge, plausibly mediated through short-range horizontal connections. Simple heuristic suppression allows the visual system to recognize novel input among many motion signals, while being most energy efficient.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)118-125
Number of pages8
JournalNeuroImage
Volume118
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2015

Keywords

  • BOLD
  • High-field fMRI
  • Horizontal connections
  • Motion bias
  • Motion displacement
  • Predictive coding
  • Suppression
  • Visual cortex

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