Single neuron sensitivity for a fine motion discrimination task

Motion words selectively modulate direction discrimination sensitivity for threshold motion

Can speech selectively modulate the sensitivity of a sensory system so that, in the presence of a suitable linguistic context, the discrimination of certain perceptual features becomes more or less likely? In this study, participants heard upward or downward motion words followed by a single visual field of random dots moving upwards or downwards. The time interval between the onsets of the aud...

Neural Systems for Motion Analysis: Single Neuron and Network Approaches

Single-neuron responses and neuronal decisions in a vernier task.

Vernier acuity is a measure of the smallest horizontal offset between two vertical lines that can be behaviorally discriminated. To examine the link between the neuronal responses in a retinotopic mosaic and vernier acuity, we recorded the responses of single cells in cat lateral geniculate nucleus to a vertical bar stimulus that was stepped in small increments through the receptive fields of c...

Feature expectation heightens visual sensitivity during fine orientation discrimination.

Attending to a stimulus enhances the sensitivity of perceptual decisions. However, it remains unclear how perceptual sensitivity varies according to whether a feature is expected or unexpected. Here, observers made fine discrimination judgments about the orientation of visual gratings embedded in low spatial-frequency noise, and psychophysical reverse correlation was used to estimate decision '...

Local motion processing limits fine direction discrimination in the periphery

Visual sensitivity is reduced in the periphery for many discrimination tasks. Previously it has been reported that motion coherence thresholds are higher for dot stimuli presented in the periphery, a finding that could arise either from (a) impaired motion integration or (b) from motion integrators inheriting more noisy local directional signals. We sought to disentangle these factors using an ...