High-level visual and motor regions are doubly dissociated in controlled tasks but only at specific times during natural behaviors
- 1Indian Institute of Science
Abstract
Our knowledge of the neural basis of sensory and motor information processing comes largely from recording brain activity in controlled settings. This approach, while insightful, blinds us from understanding natural behaviors, which involve far richer visual inputs and far larger range of movements. The prevailing belief is that, during natural behaviors, movement information would modulate visual cortex, and visual inputs would modulate motor cortex. Alternatively, this mixing might only reflect correlations between sensory inputs and movements present during natural behavior. To resolve this issue, we performed wireless recordings from high-level visual (IT) and motor regions (PMv/PFC) in freely moving monkeys while they performed a natural task and a fixation task. In each task, we extracted visual and movement features and asked to what degree these features explained neural activity. In the fixation task, we found a striking double dissociation whereby visual (but not movement) features predicted neural activity in IT, whereas motor (but not visual) features predicted neural activity in PMv & PFC. This dissociation was far weaker in the natural task but present particularly at key events when the visual and motor features were less correlated. Thus, high-level sensory and motor regions in the brain are doubly dissociated under controlled conditions, and remain so at specific times during natural behavior.
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BibTeX
@misc{saha2026highlevel,
title = {{High-level visual and motor regions are doubly dissociated in controlled tasks but only at specific times during natural behaviors}},
author = {S. Saha and S. Simon and S. Munda and T. Cherian and G. Jacob and J. Das and D. Bhadra and S. Arun},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.29.755544},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.755544v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - High-level visual and motor regions are doubly dissociated in controlled tasks but only at specific times during natural behaviors
AU - S. Saha
AU - S. Simon
AU - S. Munda
AU - T. Cherian
AU - G. Jacob
AU - J. Das
AU - D. Bhadra
AU - S. Arun
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.29.755544
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.755544v1
AB - Our knowledge of the neural basis of sensory and motor information processing comes largely from recording brain activity in controlled settings. This approach, while insightful, blinds us from understanding natural behaviors, which involve far richer visual inputs and far larger range of movements. The prevailing belief is that, during natural behaviors, movement information would modulate visual cortex, and visual inputs would modulate motor cortex. Alternatively, this mixing might only reflect correlations between sensory inputs and movements present during natural behavior. To resolve this issue, we performed wireless recordings from high-level visual (IT) and motor regions (PMv/PFC) in freely moving monkeys while they performed a natural task and a fixation task. In each task, we extracted visual and movement features and asked to what degree these features explained neural activity. In the fixation task, we found a striking double dissociation whereby visual (but not movement) features predicted neural activity in IT, whereas motor (but not visual) features predicted neural activity in PMv & PFC. This dissociation was far weaker in the natural task but present particularly at key events when the visual and motor features were less correlated. Thus, high-level sensory and motor regions in the brain are doubly dissociated under controlled conditions, and remain so at specific times during natural behavior.
ER -