The functional organization of directionally biassed feedback influences from MT to V1 and the LGN

The brain sends more signals back down the visual pathway than it receives from the eyes, and this project is trying to work out why. This matters because the standard view of vision treats it as a one-way street—light hits the eyes, signals travel to the thalamus, then to the cortex, and that is perception. But the cortex actually bombards the thalamus with feedback connections, and their function remains poorly understood. Without knowing what these backward signals do, we cannot fully explain how the brain constructs a stable, coherent visual world from noisy sensory input. This is fundamental science. It will not produce a new medical treatment or a better camera. But understanding how feedback circuits integrate motion processing across three levels of the visual system could reshape models of perception, attention, and sensory prediction. Similar fundamental work on feedback loops in the brain has previously informed treatments for visual neglect and tinnitus. A clearer picture of how higher brain areas tune lower ones may eventually guide interventions for conditions where perception breaks down—such as stroke-related visual deficits or motion blindness.