Adams, Daniel Lewis; (1997) Functional organization of the monkey visual cortex for stereoscopic depth. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Our own, and other previous studies of V3 and V3A (two visual areas constituting the V3 complex) have shown it to contain many orientation tuned cells with strong binocular interactions (Zeki 1978b; Burkhalter and Van Essen 1986; Felleman and Van Essen 1987). This, and the area's M dominated cortical input, led us to choose the V3 complex as a likely candidate for an area specialized in the processing of stereoscopic depth. Thus, the aim of this study was to record from single cells in V3 and V3A and determine their selectivity for stereoscopic depth. The responses of cells in these two areas were examined and the distribution of disparity tuned cells was compared with that in area V2, which has all modalities of vision represented in it. The results show that the V3 complex contains a high percentage of disparity tuned cells and that these are also orientation or direction tuned. Thus, these cells are detecting the horizontal disparity of visual features. Previously defined classes of disparity tuned cell (Poggio and Fischer 1977; Poggio et al. 1988) were found in both the V3 complex and parts of V2. In agreement with previous studies, (Burkhalter and Van Essen 1986; Hubei and Livingstone 1987) disparity tuned cells were found in the thick stripes of V2. The second part of this study was to examine brains injected with anatomical tracing agents to discover the cortical connections of the V3 complex and an area on the dorsal prelunate gyrus (DP) which receives an input from V3A. Results showed that the areas injected V3, V3A and DP have extensive connections with each other and with areas dealing with other attributes of vision. The results demonstrate that the V3 complex projects form and stereoscopic depth information to parietal and temporal areas which use this information for the analysis of more complex visual attributes.

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