Jones, HE; Andolina, IM; Shipp, SD; Adams, DL; Cudeiro, J; Salt, TE; Sillito, AM; (2015) Figure-ground modulation in awake primate thalamus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 112 (22) pp. 7085-7090. 10.1073/pnas.1405162112.

Preview

Text Salt_Jonesetal_PNAS_2015.pdf Download (5MB) | Preview

Abstract

Figure-ground discrimination refers to the perception of an object, the figure, against a nondescript background. Neural mechanisms of figure-ground detection have been associated with feedback interactions between higher centers and primary visual cortex and have been held to index the effect of global analysis on local feature encoding. Here, in recordings from visual thalamus of alert primates, we demonstrate a robust enhancement of neuronal firing when the figure, as opposed to the ground, component of a motion-defined figure-ground stimulus is located over the receptive field. In this paradigm, visual stimulation of the receptive field and its near environs is identical across both conditions, suggesting the response enhancement reflects higher integrative mechanisms. It thus appears that cortical activity generating the higher-order percept of the figure is simultaneously reentered into the lowest level that is anatomically possible (the thalamus), so that the signature of the evolving representation of the figure is imprinted on the input driving it in an iterative process.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONCSVXML

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item