Figure 5. Schematic Illustration of Experiments Designed to Examine Whether Microstimulation Has Disparity-Dependent Effects on Direction Discrimination.

Each panel is the top-down view of a subject, whose two eyes are represented by the large, open circles. The plane of fixation is indicated by the long horizontal line, along which dots are plotted to represent the stationary, zero-disparity background of random dots. The shaded oval represents the RF—in width and depth—of a hypothetical cluster of MT neurons.

(A) Depiction of a disparity-selective site that prefers far disparities (the RF is located behind the plane of fixation). Here, we expect microstimulation to have a significant effect on direction discrimination when dots are presented at the preferred disparity (left) but not when dots are presented at a nonpreferred disparity (right).

(B) Depiction of a nondisparity-selective site. The RF is extended in depth, indicating that it has little disparity selectivity. In this case, the effect of microstimulation should not depend on whether dots are presented at either a far (left) or a near (right) disparity.