Institute
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Principal Investigators
GU Yong
  • Department：
  • Position：Senior Investigator
  • Research Field：Miltisensory integration, heading perception
  • Phone：+86(0)21-54921710
  • E-mail：yong.gu@icpbr.ac.cn
Biography
Dr. Gu received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. He then did his first postdoctoral work at Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis . Gu joined the Institute of Neuroscience in 2011 as Investigator and Head of  Lab of Cognition.


Research Interests
Accurate estimate of self-motion through space (i.e. heading perception) requires integration of visual and vestibular cues. We use neurophysiology and computational modeling techniques in awake, behaving nonhuman primates and human psychophysics to study how brain combines multisensory signals to optimize perception. For example, we have trained rhesus monkeys to perform demanding discrimination tasks, in which animals integrate visual and vestibular cues in a statistically optimal way to improve heading judgments. Simultaneous recording from single neurons in cortical areas (e.g. the dorsal media superior temporal area, MSTd) from these monkeys allowed us to directly compare neuronal sensitivity and the animals’ perceptual threshold. We also artificially perturb cortical activity by delivering electrical current or chemicals to examine causal links between neural activity and perceptual decision.


Selected Publications

Zeng Z, Zhang C and Gu Y* (2023) Visuo-vestibular Heading Perception: A Model System to Study Multisensory Decision Making. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Li, W.#, Lu, J.#, Zhu, Z., Gu, Y.*  (2022)  Causal contribution of optic flow signal in Macaque extrastriate visual cortex for roll perception.  Nat. Commun.  13: 5479.

Zhou, L., Gu, Y.*  (2022)  Cortical Mechanisms of Multisensory Linear Self-motion Perception.  Neurosci. Bull.  : doi: 10.1007/s12264-022-00916-8

Zheng, Q., Zhou, L., Gu, Y.*  (2021)  Temporal synchrony effects of optic flow and vestibular inputs on multisensory heading perception.  Cell Rep.  37: 109999

Liu, B., Tian, Q., Gu, Y.*  (2021)  Robust vestibular self-motion signals in macaque posterior cingulate region.  eLife  10: 7554

Luo, J., He, K., Andolina,I., Li, X., Yin, J., Chen, Z., Gu, Y.,* & Wang, W.*  (2019)  Going with the flow: the neural mechanisms underlying illusions of complex-flow motion.  J. Neurosci.  39: 2664-2685

Hou, H., Zheng, Q., Zhao, Y., Pouget, A.,* & Gu, Y.*  (2019)  Neural Correlates of Optimal Multisensory Decision Making under Time-Varying Reliabilities with an Invariant Linear Probabilistic Population Code.  Neuron  104: 1010-1021

Yu, X., Hou, H., Spillmann, L., Gu, Y.*  (2018)  Causal evidence of motion signals in macaque middle temporal area weighted-pooled for global heading perception.  Cereb. Cortex  28: 612-624

Yang L & Gu Y* (2017) Distinct spatial coordinate of visual and vestibular heading signals in macaque FEFsem and MSTd. eLife, doi: 10.7554/eLife.29809

Cheng Z & Gu Y* (2016) Distributed representation of curvilinear self-motion in macaque parietal cortex. Cell Reports, 15:1013-1023.