Neural Correlates of Visual Motion Prediction

Predicting the trajectories of moving objects in our surroundings is important for many life scenarios, such as driving, walking, reaching, hunting and combat. We determined human subjects’ performance and task-related brain activity in a motion trajectory prediction task. The task required spatial and motion working memory as well as the ability to extrapolate motion information in time to predict future object locations. We showed that the neural circuits associated with motion prediction included frontal, parietal and insular cortex, as well as the thalamus and the visual cortex. Interestingly, deactivation of many of these regions seemed to be more closely related to task performance. The differential activity during motion prediction vs. direct observation was also correlated with task performance. The neural networks involved in our visual motion prediction task are significantly different from those that underlie visual motion memory and imagery. Our results set the stage for the examination of the effects of deficiencies in these networks, such as those caused by aging and mental disorders, on visual motion prediction and its consequences on mobility related daily activities

Memory Influences Visual Cognition across Multiple Functional States of Interactive Cortical Dynamics

No embargo requiredMemory supports a wide range of abilities from categorical perception to goal-directed behavior, such as decision-making and episodic recognition. Memory activates fast and surprisingly accurately and even when information is ambiguous or impoverished (i.e., showing object constancy). This paper proposes the multiple-state interactive (MUSI) account of object cognition that attempts to explain how sensory stimulation activates memory across multiple functional states of neural dynamics, including automatic and strategic mental simulation mechanisms that can ground cognition in modal information processing. A key novel postulate of this account is ‘multiple-function regional activity’: The same neuronal population can contribute to multiple brain states, depending upon the dominant set of inputs at that time. In state 1, the initial fast bottom-up pass through posterior neocortex happens between 95 ms and ~200 ms, with knowledge supporting categorical perception by 120 ms. In state 2, starting around 200 ms, a sustained state of iterative activation of object-sensitive cortex involves bottom-up, recurrent, and feedback interactions with frontoparietal cortex. This supports higher cognitive functions associated with decision-making even under ambiguous or impoverished conditions, phenomenological consciousness, and automatic mental simulation. In the latest state so far identified, state M, starting around 300 to 500 ms, large-scale cortical network interactions, including between multiple networks (e.g., control, salience, and especially default mode), further modulate posterior cortex. This supports elaborated cognition based on earlier processing, including episodic memory, strategic mental simulation, decision evaluation, creativity, and access consciousness. Convergent evidence is reviewed from cognitive neuroscience of object cognition, decision-making, memory, and mental imagery that support this account and define the brain regions and time course of these brain dynamics

Effects of strategies on mental rotation and hemispheric lateralization: neuropsychological evidence

We can predict how an object would look if we were to see it from different viewpoints by imagining its rotation. This essential human ability, called mental rotation (MR), guides individuals' actions by constantly updating their environmental consequences. It is, however, still under debate whether the way in which our brain accomplishes this operation is determined by the type of stimulus or rather by a mental strategy. Here we present neuropsychological evidence sustaining the view that what matters is the type of strategy adopted in MR. Thus, independently of the type of stimulus, patients with left hemisphere lesions showed a selective deficit in MR as a consequence of their manual activity, whereas patients with right hemisphere lesions were found impaired in MR by means of a visual strategy. We conclude that MR is achieved by recruiting different strategies, implicitly triggered or prompted at will, each sustained by a unilateral brain network