Perception of location computed outside the visual cortex

Abstract - Recent results indicate that an object’s visual location is constructed at a high level where, critically, an object’s motion is discounted to recover its current location. As a result, we sometimes see a target far from its actual location. One particular target, the double-drift stimulus, develops very large illusory shifts based on an integration time of well over a second suggesting the involvement of processes with the time course of short-term memory. fMRI results show that the shifted percept does not emerge in the visual cortex but is seen in the frontal lobes, where visual-spatial short-term memory areas would have the temporal integration required to support the effect. In summary, these findings suggest, surprisingly, that the neural correlates of conscious perception of location are in the frontal lobes, although where or why remains to be understood.