Reconstructing Stimulus Velocity from Neuronal Responses in Area MT

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 9 (NIPS 1996)

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Authors

Wyeth Bair, James Cavanaugh, J. Movshon

Abstract

We employed a white-noise velocity signal to study the dynamics of the response of single neurons in the cortical area MT to visual motion. Responses were quantified using reverse correlation, opti(cid:173) mal linear reconstruction filters, and reconstruction signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The SNR and lower bound estimates of information rate were lower than we expected. Ninety percent of the informa(cid:173) tion was transmitted below 18 Hz, and the highest lower bound on bit rate was 12 bits/so A simulated opponent motion energy sub(cid:173) unit with Poisson spike statistics was able to out-perform the MT neurons. The temporal integration window, measured from the re(cid:173) verse correlation half-width, ranged from 30-90 ms. The window was narrower when a stimulus moved faster, but did not change when temporal frequency was held constant.