Evidence for a Causal Contribution of Macaque Vestibular, But Not Intraparietal, Cortex to Heading Perception

Abstract

Multisensory vestibular and visual signals are found in multiple cortical areas, but their causal contribution to self-motion perception has been previously tested only in the dorsal medial superior temporal (MSTd) area. In these experiments, we show that inactivation of the parietoinsular vestibular cortex (PIVC) also results in causal deficits during heading discrimination for both visual and vestibular cues. In contrast, ventral intraparietal (VIP) area inactivation led to no behavioral deficits, despite the fact that VIP neurons show much stronger choice-related activity than MSTd or PIVC neurons. These results demonstrate that choice-related activity does not always imply a causal role in sensory perception.