Object motion representation in the macaque ventral stream – a gateway to understanding the brain’s intuitive physics engine

Effective interaction with moving objects and the ability to infer and predict their motion (a core component of “intuitive physics”) is essential for survival in the dynamic world. How does the primate visual system process such stimuli, enabling predictive capabilities for dynamic stimuli statistics like motion velocity and expected trajectories? In this study, we probed brain areas in the ventral visual pathway of rhesus macaques implicated in object recognition (areas V4 and inferior temporal, IT, cortex) to evaluate how they represent object motion speed and direction. We assessed the relationship between the distributed population activity in the ventral stream and two distinct object motion-based behaviors—one reliant on information directly available in videos (speed discrimination) and the other predicated on predictive motion estimates from videos (future event predictions). Further, employing microstimulation strategies, we confirm the causal, functional role of the IT cortex in these behaviors. Our results underscore the need to re-examine the traditional functional segregation of the primate visual cortices into “what” and “where” pathways and provide empirical constraints to model their interaction for a better circuit-level understanding of visual motion and intuitive physics.