Distributed and Dynamic Neural Encoding of Multiple Motion Directions of Transparently Moving Stimuli in Cortical Area MT

Overview

Journal J Neurosci

Specialty Neurology

Date 2015 Dec 15

PMID 26658869

Citations 13

Authors

Jianbo Xiao

Xin Huang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Significance Statement: Natural scenes often contain multiple entities. The ability to segment visual scenes into distinct objects and surfaces is fundamental to sensory processing and is crucial for generating the perception of our environment. Because cortical neurons are broadly tuned to a given visual feature, segmenting two stimuli that differ only slightly is a challenge for the visual system. In this study, we discovered that many neurons in the visual cortex are capable of representing individual components of slightly different stimuli by selectively and nonlinearly pooling the responses elicited by the stimulus components. We also show for the first time that the neural representation of individual stimulus components developed over a period of ∼70-100 ms, revealing a dynamic process of image segmentation.

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