Question

What is MT and why did the Newsome Lab focus its efforts to understand perception there? What were the primary aims of the work on MT?

Answer 1

MT stands for Middle temporal visual area.

Newsome, was a neuroscience faculty at Stanford University, who along with Daniel Salzman, was studying the elctrical activity of directionally selective neurons in visual cortex. They trained rhesus monkeys to respond differently to stimuli moving in different directions. While testing them, they were recording the activity in MT neurons. When the columns of "up" cells or "down" cells were stimulated, monkeys perceived that the stimulus was moving upward, while actually it was moving downward. This identified that while activating neurons artificially, Newsome was able to change the monkey's conscious perceptual judgement. This experiment fascinated him.

Newsome and his colleagues are researching on the processing of visual information. Studies are underway to understand processing of visual information as signals move from one cortical area to the next. Also, understanding the process of sensorimotor integration are the primary aims on this area.