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Local Motion Is Sufficient for Human Body Movement Perception in High-Level Visual Cortex

Li, B.; Vogels, R.; Marrazzo, G.; Poyo Solanas, M.; de Gelder, B.

2026-02-27 neuroscience
10.64898/2026.02.26.708181 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Perceiving the movements of other living organisms is a fundamental ability across species. Although several cortical regions are selective for static body features, it is unclear whether these areas also encode motion cues independently of body shapes. Here, we isolated local motion signals from naturalistic body movements using synthesized videos that eliminate explicit body shape information. We demonstrate that local motion alone is sufficient for perceiving human body movement. Using ultra-high field fMRI, we found that three body-motion-related areas, fusiform gyrus (FG), lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC), and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), were sensitive to both the amount and the spatiotemporal structure of local motion. Critically, the local motion effects were significantly correlated to voxel-wise body motion selectivity in FG and LOTC, but not in pSTS. These findings identify local motion as a distinct and behaviorally sufficient cue for body perception, which can be encoded in FG and LOTC in parallel with body shape processing.

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