Given the characteristics of the transfer, the attenuation of motion adaptation likely reflects the plasticity of direction-selective neurons with large receptive fields. Which brain areas do those neurons reside in? The middle temporal visual area (MT/V5) could be a candidate cortical region. MT/V5 is known to be important for the processing of motion information. Neurons in MT/V5 are direction selective and have considerably large receptive field (Albright,
2014; Desimone & Ungerleider,
1986; Lagae, Raiguel, & Orban,
1993; Van Essen, Maunsell, & Bixby,
1981). However, these neurons represent the contralateral visual field (Desimone & Ungerleider,
1986), and the retinotopic or spatiotopic property of MT/V5 remains controversial (Crespi et al.,
2011; d'Avossa et al.,
2007; Gardner, Merriam, Movshon, & Heeger,
2008). Therefore, the contribution of MT/V5 alone should not account for the transfer to the adapter located at different retinal and spatial locations. Neurons in the MST are also tuned to motion direction (Desimone & Ungerleider,
1986), and have been found to play a role in representing the MAE (Hogendoorn & Verstraten,
2013; Rühl, Bauermann, Dieterich, & zu Eulenburg,
2018). More importantly, their receptive fields are large enough to extend to ipsilateral hemifield (Desimone & Ungerleider,
1986; Huk, Dougherty, & Heeger,
2002). Similar properties have been found in the LIP (Hamed, Duhamel, Bremmer, & Graf,
2001; Fanini & Assad,
2009). Thus, these areas are more likely to be involved in the habituation of motion adaptation. Nevertheless, neuroimaging methods are needed to further explore the underlying mechanisms.