Two-dimensional substructure of stereo and motion interactions in macaque visual cortex

The analysis of object motion and stereoscopic depth are important tasks that are begun at early stages of the primate visual system. Using sparse white noise, we mapped the receptive field substructure of motion and disparity interactions in neurons in V1 and MT of alert monkeys. Interactions in both regions revealed subunits similar in structure to V1 simple cells. For both motion and stereo, the scale and shape of the receptive field substructure could be predicted from conventional tuning for bars or dot-field stimuli, indicating that the small-scale interactions were repeated across the receptive fields. We also found neurons in V1 and in MT that were tuned to combinations of spatial and temporal binocular disparities, suggesting a possible neural substrate for the perceptual Pulfrich phenomenon. Our observations constrain computational and developmental models of motion-stereo integration.