The Responses of VIP Neurons Are Sufficiently Sensitive to Support Heading Judgments

Zhang T, Britten KH. The responses of VIP neurons are sufficiently sensitive to support heading judgments. J Neurophysiol 103: 1865-1873, 2010. First published February 3, 2010; doi: 10.1152/jn.00401.2009. 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.