Distributed Visual-Vestibular Processing in the Cerebral Cortex of Man and Macaque

Recent advances in understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of visual-vestibular interactions underlying self-motion perception are reviewed with an emphasis on comparisons between the macaque and human brains. In both species, several distinct cortical regions have been identified that are active during both visual and vestibular stimulation and in some of these there is clear evidence for sensory integration. Several possible cross-species homologies between cortical regions are identified. A key feature of cortical organization is that the same information is apparently represented in multiple, anatomically diverse cortical regions, suggesting that information about self-motion is used for different purposes in different brain regions.