Zhang Tao, Britten Kenneth H
Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, Univ. of California, Davis, CA 95618, USA.
J Neurophysiol. 2010 Apr;103(4):1865-73. doi: 10.1152/jn.00401.2009. Epub 2010 Feb 3.
The ventral intraparietal area (VIP) of the macaque monkey is thought to be involved in judging heading direction based on optic flow. We recorded neuronal discharges in VIP while monkeys were performing a two-alternative, forced-choice heading discrimination task to relate quantitatively the activity of VIP neurons to monkeys' perceptual choices. Most VIP neurons were responsive to simulated heading stimuli and were tuned such that their responses changed across a range of forward trajectories. Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, we found that most VIP neurons were less sensitive to small heading changes than was the monkey, although a minority of neurons were equally sensitive. Pursuit eye movements modestly yet significantly increased both neuronal and behavioral thresholds by approximately the same amount. Our results support the view that VIP activity is involved in self-motion judgments.
猕猴的腹侧顶内区（VIP）被认为参与基于光流来判断航向方向。我们在猴子执行二选一的强制选择航向辨别任务时记录了VIP中的神经元放电，以便将VIP神经元的活动与猴子的感知选择进行定量关联。大多数VIP神经元对模拟的航向刺激有反应，并经过调整，使其反应在一系列向前轨迹上发生变化。使用接受者操作特征（ROC）分析，我们发现大多数VIP神经元对小的航向变化不如猴子敏感，尽管少数神经元同样敏感。追踪眼球运动适度但显著地将神经元和行为阈值提高了大致相同的幅度。我们的结果支持这样一种观点，即VIP活动参与自我运动判断。
