Motion Perception in the Common Marmoset.
Visual motion processing is a well-established model system for studying neural population codes in primates. The common marmoset, a small new world primate, offers unparalleled opportunities to probe these population codes in key motion processing areas, such as cortical areas MT and MST, because these areas are accessible for imaging and recording at the cortical surface. However, little is currently known about the perceptual abilities of the marmoset. Here, we introduce a paradigm for studying motion perception in the marmoset and compare their psychophysical performance with human observers. We trained two marmosets to perform a motion estimation task in which they provided an analog report of their perceived direction of motion with an eye movement to a ring that surrounded the motion stimulus. Marmosets and humans exhibited similar trade-offs in speed versus accuracy: errors were larger and reaction times were longer as the strength of the motion signal was reduced. Reverse correlation on the temporal fluctuations in motion direction revealed that both species exhibited short integration windows; however, marmosets had substantially less nondecision time than humans. Our results provide the first quantification of motion perception in the marmoset and demonstrate several advantages to using analog estimation tasks.
['Cloherty|Shaun L|SL|', 'Yates|Jacob L|JL|', 'Graf|Dina|D|', 'DeAngelis|Gregory C|GC|', 'Mitchell|Jude F|JF|']
D000328:Adult D000818:Animals D002144:Callithrix D005133:Eye Movements D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D009039:Motion Perception D010775:Photic Stimulation D011930:Reaction Time D013045:Species Specificity D014793:Visual Cortex D055815:Young Adult
psychophysics motion estimation decision-making marmoset monkey vision