Abstract
The visual system needs to identify perceptually relevant borders to segment complex natural scenes. The primary visual cortex (V1) is thought to extract local borders, and higher visual areas are thought to identify the perceptually relevant borders between objects and the background. To test this conjecture, we used natural images that had been annotated by human observers who marked the perceptually relevant borders. We assessed the effect of perceptual relevance on V1 responses using human neuroimaging, macaque electrophysiology, and computational modeling. We report that perceptually relevant borders elicit stronger responses in the early visual cortex than irrelevant ones, even if simple features, such as contrast and the energy of oriented filters, are matched. Moreover, V1 neurons discriminate perceptually relevant borders surprisingly fast, during the early feedforward-driven activity at a latency of ~50 ms, indicating that they are tuned to the features that characterize them. We also revealed a delayed, contextual effect that enhances the V1 responses that are elicited by perceptually relevant borders at a longer latency. Our results reveal multiple mechanisms that allow V1 neurons to infer the layout of objects in natural images.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2221623121 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-10 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| Volume | 121 |
| Issue number | 46 |
| Early online date | 4 Nov 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12 Nov 2024 |
Funding
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Kor Brandsma and Anneke Ditewig for biotechnical support. The work was supported by the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 and FP7 Research and Innovation Program (Framework Partnership Agreement No. 650003 [Human Brain Project Framework Partnership Agreement], European Research Council advanced grant 101052963 \u201CNUMEROUS\u201D and grant agreement 899287 \u201CNeuraViper\u201D),\u201CDBI2,\u201D a Gravitation program of the Dutch Ministry of Science, Education and Culture) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Crossover Program 17619 \u201CINTENSE\u201D to P.R.R.,the European Union\u2019s Erasmus+ program (2018-1-IT02-KA103-047276/10), the NWO Open-Competition Domain Science\u2013XS (OCENW.XS22.2.097) and the NWO Veni (VI.Veni.222.217) to P.P.and the NWO Vidi (452.08.008) and Vici (016.vici.185.050) to S.O.D. We thank Kor Brandsma and Anneke Ditewig for biotechnical support. The work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 and FP7 Research and Innovation Program (Framework Partnership Agreement No. 650003 [Human Brain Project Framework Partnership Agreement], European Research Council advanced grant 101052963 \"NUMEROUS\" and grant agreement 899287 \"NeuraViper\"), \"DBI2, \" a Gravitation program of the Dutch Ministry of Science, Education and Culture) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Crossover Program 17619 \"INTENSE\" to P.R.R., the European Union's Erasmus+ program (2018-1-IT02-KA103-047276/10), the NWO Open-Competition Domain Science-XS (OCENW.XS22.2.097) and the NWO Veni (VI.Veni.222.217) to P.P. and the NWO Vidi (452.08.008) and Vici (016.vici.185.050) to S.O.D.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| NWO Open-Competition Domain Science | |
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | |
| European Commission | |
| Dutch Ministry of Science, Education and Culture | |
| European Research Council | 899287, 101052963 |
| European Research Council | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | OCENW.XS22.2.097, 2018-1-IT02-KA103-047276/10, 17619, 452.08.008, VI.Veni.222.217 |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| FP7 Research and Innovation Program | 650003 |
Keywords
- fmri
- natural vision
- neurophysiology
- nonhuman primates
- V1