RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Motion perception in the common marmoset
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 522888
DO 10.1101/522888
A1 Shaun L. Cloherty
A1 Jacob L. Yates
A1 Dina Graf
A1 Gregory C. DeAngelis
A1 Jude F. Mitchell
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/17/522888.abstract
AB 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 to 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 vs. 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 non-decision time than humans. Our results provide the first quantification of motion perception in the marmoset and demonstrate several advantages to using analog estimation tasks.