Mice, marmosets and humans use ambiguous local motion to stabilize gaze

NOT neurons in mice, marmosets, and humans are strongly biased toward local edge motion, and this bias directly shapes gaze-stabilizing eye movements.

• Why it matters: Sensory periphery signals are ambiguous about object motion, raising the question of whether behavior requires resolving that ambiguity or can use it directly.
• What they did: The study traced retinal motion signals to the nucleus of the optic tract (NOT) and linked in vivo electrophysiology with computational modeling and eye tracking using stimuli that separate local edge motion from global object motion.
• The result: Eye movements followed local motion in all three species, with mice showing horizontal movements when the edge orientation of vertically moving objects was changed; marmosets and humans showed similar biases, amplified in humans when central vision was masked.

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