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Abstract

It is still not clear how the visual system compensates for self-induced visual motion. Doing so is crucial to convey visual stability and to recognize motion in the external world. Substantial evidence suggests that efference copies of eye movement commands are integrated with visual input, allowing to separate self-induced retinal motion from external objective motion. Here we used fMRI to investigate functional responses of sixteen visual areas to planar objective motion during pursuit. At two pursuit speeds, observers were exposed to objective motion that was faster, matched or slower relative to pursuit. We found that areas V3A, V6, VIP and the early visual cortex preferred objective motion faster than pursuit to objective motion slower than pursuit and thus signaled the direction of retinal motion relative to the direction of eye movements. Additionally, we examined functional connectivity between area V3A and the thalamus, which is known to contribute to cortico-cortical communication and the transmission of efference copies, and found a retinal motion dependent functional link between V3A and the dorsal thalamus. The present results emphasize the key role of area V3A in compensating self-induced visual motion and further point to an involvement of both early visual cortex and the thalamus.