Grouping Components of Three-Dimensional Moving Objects in Area MST of Visual Cortex

Previous investigators have suggested that these cells may represent self-motion. Spiral patterns can also be gener(cid:173) ated by the relative motion of the observer and a particular object. An MST cell may then account for some portion of the complex flow field, and the set of active cells could encode the entire flow; in this manner, MST effectively segments moving objects. Such a grouping operation is essential in interpreting scenes containing several independent moving objects and observer motion. We de(cid:173) scribe a model based on the hypothesis that the selective tuning of MST cells reflects the grouping of object components undergo(cid:173) ing coherent motion.