Auditory and Visual Motion Processing and Integration in the Primate Cerebral Cortex

• Published in: Frontiers in neural circuits Vol. 12; p. 93
• Main Authors: Chaplin, Tristan A, Rosa, Marcello G P, Lui, Leo L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 26-10-2018; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation - methods; Animals; audiovisual integration; auditory motion; Auditory Perception - physiology; Brain; Cerebral cortex; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Humans; Information processing; Monkeys & apes; Motion detection; Motion Perception - physiology; Neurons; Neuroscience; Photic Stimulation - methods; Primates; Sensory integration; Sensory neurons; Sensory systems; Somatosensory cortex; Visual cortex; Visual field; visual motion; Visual perception; Visual stimuli; Australia; cerebral cortex; primates; visual motion; auditory motion; audiovisual integration
• ISSN: 1662-5110; 1662-5110
• DOI: 10.3389/fncir.2018.00093

The ability of animals to detect motion is critical for survival, and errors or even delays in motion perception may prove costly. In the natural world, moving objects in the visual field often produce concurrent sounds. Thus, it can highly advantageous to detect motion elicited from sensory signals of either modality, and to integrate them to produce more reliable motion perception. A great deal of progress has been made in understanding how visual motion perception is governed by the activity of single neurons in the primate cerebral cortex, but far less progress has been made in understanding both auditory motion and audiovisual motion integration. Here we, review the key cortical regions for motion processing, focussing on translational motion. We compare the representations of space and motion in the visual and auditory systems, and examine how single neurons in these two sensory systems encode the direction of motion. We also discuss the way in which humans integrate of audio and visual motion cues, and the regions of the cortex that may mediate this process.