Understanding trial-by-trial variability in sensory-motor transformation

Understanding the origins of behavioural variability is a central question in neuroscience. This thesis addresses how fluctuations in neural activity give rise to variability in motor behaviour, focusing on ocular following in marmoset monkeys. Ocular following offers an ideal model due to its well-defined circuitry and rapid sensorimotor transformation. By combining behavioural analysis with large-scale neural recordings from the middle temporal area (MT), this work demonstrates that structured sensory variability contributes significantly to motor variability. These findings advance our understanding of how variable motor outputs can be originated from fluctuated sensory estimates and highlight the importance of population-level neural dynamics.