Neurons compute internal models of the physical laws of motion

Dora E. Angelaki (), Aasef G. Shaikh, Andrea M. Green and J. David Dickman
Additional contact information
Dora E. Angelaki: Washington University School of Medicine
Aasef G. Shaikh: Washington University School of Medicine
Andrea M. Green: Washington University School of Medicine
J. David Dickman: Washington University School of Medicine

Nature, 2004, vol. 430, issue 6999, 560-564

Abstract: Abstract A critical step in self-motion perception and spatial awareness is the integration of motion cues from multiple sensory organs that individually do not provide an accurate representation of the physical world. One of the best-studied sensory ambiguities is found in visual processing, and arises because of the inherent uncertainty in detecting the motion direction of an untextured contour moving within a small aperture1,2,3,4. A similar sensory ambiguity arises in identifying the actual motion associated with linear accelerations sensed by the otolith organs in the inner ear5,6. These internal linear accelerometers respond identically during translational motion (for example, running forward) and gravitational accelerations experienced as we reorient the head relative to gravity (that is, head tilt). Using new stimulus combinations, we identify here cerebellar and brainstem motion-sensitive neurons that compute a solution to the inertial motion detection problem. We show that the firing rates of these populations of neurons reflect the computations necessary to construct an internal model representation of the physical equations of motion.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02754 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:430:y:2004:i:6999:d:10.1038_nature02754

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02754

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().