Optic flow informs moving observers about their heading direction. Neurons in monkey medial superior temporal cortex show heading selective responses to optic flow and planar direction selective responses to local motion patches. Our goal was to test the hypothesis that the optic flow responses reflect the sum of the local motion responses. The local motion responses of each neuron were modeled as mixtures of Gaussians derived using a genetic algorithm, to predict that neurons optic flow responses. Some neurons showed good correspondence between local motion models and optic flow responses,...