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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 4, 2026

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

Published on: August 22, 2025

Parietal area VIP causally influences heading perception during pursuit eye movements.

Tao Zhang¹, Kenneth H Britten

¹Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, California 95618, USA.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|February 18, 2011

Summary

The ventral intraparietal area (VIP) causally influences self-motion perception. Electrical stimulation of VIP biased heading discrimination, especially during smooth pursuit eye movements, indicating its role in visual self-motion processing.

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Using Eye-tracking to Assess the Relative Importance of Visual and Vestibular Input to Subcortical Motion Processing in the Roll Plane

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Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

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Published on: April 16, 2014

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Primate Neurophysiology

Background:

The ventral intraparietal area (VIP) in macaque brains integrates multimodal sensory information, including visual, vestibular, and somatosensory inputs.
VIP neurons exhibit directional visual responses, particularly to optic flow patterns relevant to self-motion perception.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the causal role of the ventral intraparietal area (VIP) in the perception of self-motion direction using visual cues.
To determine if perturbing VIP activity directly affects heading discrimination performance.

Main Methods:

Electrical microstimulation was employed to modulate neural activity within the VIP of macaque monkeys.
Monkeys performed a two-alternative heading discrimination task during microstimulation to assess perceptual biases.

Main Results:

Microstimulation of VIP systematically biased the monkeys' choices in heading discrimination tasks, aligning with the preferred direction of stimulated neurons.
The influence of VIP stimulation on perception was significantly enhanced during ongoing smooth pursuit eye movements.

Conclusions:

The ventral intraparietal area (VIP) is causally involved in processing visual information for self-motion perception.
The contribution of VIP to self-motion perception is modulated by concurrent motor behavior, such as smooth pursuit eye movements.