Marc Sommer - "Neuronal circuits that link action and perception"

Recording of the speaker's talk at the Barcelona Brain and Technology Summer School, September 2012. More information at www.bcbt.upf.edu/bcbt12.

"Perceiving the world accurately while interacting with it is a challenging problem. Each of our movements affects our sensory receptors, causing the potential for gross misreadings of external stimuli. Sensory systems of the brain deal with this problem by using copies of movement commands (corollary discharge signals) provided by motor systems. My lab has studied in detail a corollary discharge pathway that runs from a brainstem eye movement center up to a frontal cortex region in primates. It provides the visual system with information about impending saccadic eye movements. Our most recent findings suggest how signals for vision and action are combined at the microcircuit level within the FEF. The work is revising our conceptual views of corollary discharge and suggesting architectures for robotic systems that emulate the primate's ability to sense the world accurately despite self-movement."