Aligned motion-direction information for touch and vision in hMT+/V5
(2023) Society for Neuroscience — Location: Washington DC, the USA
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- Authors
Cerpelloni, Filippo 
Van Audenhaege, Alice
- Abstract
- Motion directions can be perceived through vision and touch. This motion information coming from the different senses must spatially align to carry out optimal goal-directed tasks. This alignment is not trivial since vision and touch are initially coded in different spatial frames of references and the body parts can change postures, which eventually change the external coordinates while keeping the somatotopic coordinates intact. Is there any brain region where the direction of visual and tactile motion is coded using a common frame of reference independent of body-posture? To address this unsolved question, we characterized the brain activity of participants using fMRI in two experiments. We first implemented visual and tactile motion localizers to functionally identify motion selective regions in each individual in both the modalities. In addition to sensory specific motion selective regions, whole-brain univariate analyses revealed that the middle occipito-temporal region (hMT+/V5) is motion selective across the senses. In another experiment, we delivered directional visual and tactile motion stimuli across different hand postures. Multivariate pattern analyses revealed that motion directions can be decoded in both vision and touch in hMT+/V5. Importantly, information about tactile directions was enhanced when mapped using an externally-centred coordinate system as compared to a somatotopic frame of reference in this region. Finally, crossmodal decoding showed that tactile directions defined using an externally-centred coordinate system, but not the somatotopic frame of reference, align with the representation of visual directions in hMT+/V5. Our results show that motion directions in vision and touch are aligned in hMT+/V5 relying on a common external frame of reference. hMT+/V5, as a motion-selective region across different sensory modalities, may play a role in transforming spatial frames of reference during multisensory motion processing.
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Citations
Iqra Shahzad, Battal, C., Cerpelloni, F., Van Audenhaege, A., Mouraux, A., & Collignon, O. (2023). Aligned motion-direction information for touch and vision in hMT+/V5. Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC, the USA. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/103670