Brain regions involved in locomotor steering in a virtual environment

Steering using optic flow allows adapting locomotion to the environment. Persons with brain lesions display difficulty steering and thus, gaining insight into the brain regions involved in steering may shed light on the disturbed mechanisms of visuomotor control. A joystick-based navigation task in a virtual environment was used to explore brain regions involved in steering control while exposed to optic flows of changing directions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that hMT+, bilateral cerebellum, frontal and supplementary eye fields are specifically involved in steering control and may reflect the pathway in which visual motion information is transformed into goal-directed action.