Fresh insight into visual motion
Recent research has challenged the long-standing but limited view of the role that the primary visual cortex plays in how we process and perceive motion. The corpus callosum is now thought to link hemispherical representations into one dynamic scene. That is, perceived direction is expected to be continuously coded through the two hemispheres. The DIRCallosDVPT project seeks to discover how the corpus callosum can provide a substrate for this inter-hemispheric transfer of different types of visual motion. The project team is also interested in how this develops with age. Researchers use a cat model and optical imaging for their experiments. Cats of various ages are used and subjected to different stimulation paradigms. Experimental data at this stage suggest that the corpus callosum may play a role in processing self-motion by adjusting the perceived direction in the other hemisphere. Project partners will confirm these results by using optical imaging together with anatomical tracer injection and, in this way, investigate functional selectivity of inter-hemispheric connections. DirCallosDVPT expects that the results of this project will offer new insights on how complex movements are processed at the level of the primary visual cortex.
