J. Anthony Movshon

Vision and visual development

I am interested in how the brain encodes and decodes visual information, and in the mechanisms that put that information to use in the control of behavior. My research concerns the function and development of the primate visual system, especially the visual areas of the cerebral cortex. My laboratory supports work on neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, psychophysics, and brain imaging; the main experimental tool is electrophysiological recording from single neurons in monkeys. We stress analytical and quantitative approaches to the study of visual receptive fields. Conceptually, much of this research draws on related work in visual psychophysics, and on computational approaches to understanding brain organization and visual processing. 

I received my doctorate from Cambridge University, where I studied visual neurophysiology and psychophysics. I joined the Department of Psychology at New York University in 1975, and have remained here apart from a sabbatical year spent at Oxford University. In 1986, my laboratory moved to the Center for Neural Science. 

My laboratory works mostly in two broad areas. The first concerns the functions of the visual areas of the primate cerebral cortex, with special emphasis on the roles of those areas in processing information about visual motion, form, and color. I am particularly interested in the relationships between visual signals in these areas, and the perceptual decisions and motor activity they support. The second concerns the functional development of the cortical visual system, and on the way that development is affected by forms of abnormal early visual experience that produce a visual system disorder known as amblyopia.  

My laboratory maintains active collaborations with other groups at NYU, including those of Michael Hawken, Lynne Kiorpes, and Eero Simoncelli. 

D. M. Levi, S. P. McKee and J. A. Movshon (2011). Visual deficits in anisometropia. Vision Research 51: 48-57.

A. B. A. Graf, A. Kohn, M. Jazayeri and J. A. Movshon (2011). Decoding the activity of neuronal populations in macaque primary visual cortex. Nature Neuroscience 14: 239-245.

J. Freeman, C. M. Ziemba, D. J. Heeger, E. P. Simoncelli and J. A. Movshon (2013). A functional and perceptual signature of the second visual area in primates. Nature Neuroscience 16: 974-981.

Y. El-Shamayleh, R. D. Kumbhani, N. T. Dhruv and J. A. Movshon (2013). Visual response properties of V1 neurons projecting to V2 in macaque. Journal of Neuroscience 33: 16594-16605.

R. L. Goris, E. P. Simoncelli and J. A. Movshon (2015). Origin and function of tuning diversity in macaque visual cortex. Neuron 88: 819-831.

R. L. Goris, C. M. Ziemba, G. M. Stine, E. P. Simoncelli and J. A. Movshon (2017). Dissociation of choice formation and choice-correlated activity in macaque visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 37: 5195-5203.

C. M. Ziemba, J. Freeman, E. P. Simoncelli and J. A. Movshon (2018). Contextual modulation of sensitivity to naturalistic image structure in macaque V2. Journal of Neurophysiology 120, 409–420.

P. Wallisch and J. A. Movshon (2019). Responses of neurons in macaque MT to unikinetic plaids. Journal of Neurophysiology 122, 1937–1945.

K. Acar, L. Kiorpes, J. A. Movshon and M. A. Smith (2019). Altered functional interactions between neurons in primary visual cortex of macaque monkeys with experimental amblyopia. Journal of Neurophysiology 122, 2243–2258.

J. D. Lieber, G. M. Lee, N. J. Majaj and J. A. Movshon (2023). Sensitivity to naturalistic texture relies primarily on high spatial frequencies. Journal of Vision 23(2):4, 1–25

R. T. Raghavan, J. G. Kelly, J. M. Hasse, P. G. Levy, M. J. Hawken, J. A. Movshon (2023). Contrast and luminance gain control in the macaque's lateral geniculate nucleus. eNeuro https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0515-22.2023