Neural substrates of perception in the vestibular thalamus during natural self-motion: A review.

ABSTRACT: Accumulating evidence across multiple sensory modalities suggests that the thalamus does not simply relay information from the periphery to the cortex. Here we review recent findings showing that vestibular neurons within the ventral posteriolateral area of the thalamus perform nonlinear transformations on their afferent input that determine our subjective awareness of motion. Specifically, these neurons provide a substrate for previous psychophysical observations that perceptual discrimination thresholds are much better than predictions from Weber's law. This is because neural discrimination thresholds, which are determined from both variability and sensitivity, initially increase but then saturate with increasing stimulus amplitude, thereby matching the previously observed dependency of

SUBMITTER: Cullen KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10011815 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature