A Role for the Ventral Visual Stream in Reporting Movements

doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0996

NeuroImage

Volume 15, Issue 3, March 2002, Pages 587-595

https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0996 Get rights and content

Abstract

In this experiment we contrast the neural activity associated with reporting a stimulus attribute with the activity that occurs when the same stimulus attribute is used to guide behavior. Reporting the characteristics of a stimulus differs from simply tracking that stimulus since reporting requires that a stimulus is explicitly recognized and associated with an arbitrary response. In one condition the subject used his right finger to follow a square that moved randomly on a screen. In a second condition he had to indicate changes in the direction of the square's movements by touching one of two report buttons with his right finger. Two other conditions were added to control for the differences in the form of movement between the two primary conditions. When the reporting condition was contrasted with the tracking condition (controlling for the differences in the form of movement), areas in the ventral visual system (the left ventral prefrontal cortex and the left inferior temporal cortex) were activated. This study shows that contrasting a manual task which involves a report with a manual task which does not activates the ventral visual system. However, the observation of additional activity in other areas suggests that, while activity in the ventral stream is necessary for reporting, it is not sufficient.

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The involvement of cognitive processing in a perceptual-motor process examined with EEG time-frequency analysis
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Citation Excerpt :
Depending on the task requirements, these visual pathways may be involved differentially in executing a given visuomotor task. For instance, if a task is a pure visual discrimination to recognize an object identity such that participants are asked, for instance, to discern which of two objects looks larger/smaller, it is expected that a cortical activity associated with the ventral stream may be dominant (Farrer et al., 2002; Westwod et al., 2000b). Likewise, if the task is to reach or grasp a visual object that is occluded before or right after the onset of a prehensile movement, producing the prehensile movement needs to be guided by the memory of the object shape and location (Heath et al., 2005; Westwod et al., 2000a,b).
For motor activities, visual information is crucial for organizing a movement with respect to a given situation. The present study investigates how cognitive information processing is associated with this visuomotor process.
Brain dynamics in executing two perceptual-motor tasks were examined in terms of event-related synchronization (ERS) and event-related desynchronization (ERD) of EEG. Those tasks were (1) reaching toward and grasping a visual object with a pinch grip, and (2) matching the pinch grip size with respect to the perceived object size.
According to the aperture size in the task execution, both the tasks were affected by the perceived object size inducing the Ebbinghaus illusion. The alpha-ERD patterns were associated with the movement execution and appeared to be identical in both the tasks, whilst the gamma-ERS appeared only for the grasping motion.
These results suggest that cognitive processing was involved not only in the matching task but also in the grasping task. These ERD/ERS patterns are thought to reflect the similarity and difference in the perceptual-motor processes between the two tasks.
The analysis of ERD/ERS can provide insight on the qualitative feature in a visuomotor process associated with the involvement of cognitive processing.
The Motor System
2003, Human Brain Function: Second Edition
This chapter uses the term motor system in context of parietal and prefrontal cortex, as well as the premotor and motor areas. All of these are involved in the selection, guidance or execution of action. The advantage of studying the motor system is that, as for the visual system, the anatomy and physiology are well worked out in non-human primates. One can for instance, identify different motor and premotor areas in the macaque monkey using cytoarchitectonics and receptor architectonics. Thus, the motor system provides an excellent case study of how the findings of imaging experiments can be grounded in anatomy and physiology. Understanding the motor system requires a combination of methods available to neuroscience. This chapter discusses how imaging makes a major contribution to this enterprise. This chapter is not an exhaustive review of imaging studies on the motor system instead; it considers three topics that are believed to be of fundamental importance. The first is how visual information can influence action, the second is how actions are selected when there are no external cues at the time of selection, and the last is how novel actions are learned until they become automatic with practice.
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Vernier threshold in patients with schizophrenia and in their unaffected siblings
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Human brain function: Second edition
2003, Human Brain Function: Second Edition

¹: To whom correspondence should be addressed at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives, 67 Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron, France. Fax: 33 4 37 91 12 10. E-mail: [email protected].

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Regular ArticleA Role for the Ventral Visual Stream in Reporting Movements

Abstract

Behav. Brain Res.

Trends Neurosci.

Curr. Opin. Neurobiol.

Principles of Neurology

Pathways for motion analysis: Cortical connections of the medial superior temporal and fundus of the superior temporal visual areas in the macaque

J. Comp. Neurol.

Frontal lobe mechanisms subserving vision-for-action versus vision-for-perception

Behav. Brain Res.

Segregation of cognitive and motor aspects of visual function using induced motion

Percept. Psychophys.

Tactile-vibration-activated foci in insular and parietal–opercular cortex studied with PET mapping the second somatosensory area in humans

Somatosens. Mol. Res.

Temporal dissociation of motor responses and subjective awareness: A study in normal subjects

Brain

Blindsight in monkeys

Nature

A multimodal cortical network for the detection of changes in the sensory environment

Nat. Neurosci.

A MRI-based probabilistic atlas of neuroanatomy

Visual pathways for object-oriented action and object recognition: Functional anatomy with PET

Cereb. Cortex

The role of cerebral cortex in the generation of voluntary saccades: A PET study

J. Neurophysiol.

Spatial registration and normalisation of images

Hum. Brain Mapping

Willed action and the prefrontal cortex in man: A study with PET

Proc. R. Soc. London B.

Perceiving the world and grasping it: A neurological dissociation

Nature

A bimodal map of space: Somatosensory receptive fields in the macaque putamen with corresponding visual receptive field

Exp. Brain Res.

Regular Article
A Role for the Ventral Visual Stream in Reporting Movements