scholarly journals Hierarchical temporal prediction captures motion processing from retina to higher visual cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yosef Singer ◽  
Ben D. B. Willmore ◽  
Andrew J. King ◽  
Nicol S. Harper
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Neural Coding ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
Motion Processing ◽  
Visual Neurons ◽  
V1 Neurons ◽  
Temporal Prediction ◽  
Complex Features ◽  
High Level ◽  
Visual Cortical

Visual neurons respond selectively to specific features that become increasingly complex in their form and dynamics from the eyes to the cortex. Retinal neurons prefer localized flashing spots of light, primary visual cortical (V1) neurons moving bars, and those in higher cortical areas, such as middle temporal (MT) cortex, favor complex features like moving textures. Whether there are general computational principles behind this diversity of response properties remains unclear. To date, no single normative model has been able to account for the hierarchy of tuning to dynamic inputs along the visual pathway. Here we show that hierarchical application of temporal prediction - representing features that efficiently predict future sensory input from past sensory input - can explain how neuronal tuning properties, particularly those relating to motion, change from retina to higher visual cortex. This suggests that the brain may not have evolved to efficiently represent all incoming information, as implied by some leading theories. Instead, the selective representation of sensory inputs that help in predicting the future may be a general neural coding principle, which when applied hierarchically extracts temporally-structured features that depend on increasingly high-level statistics of the sensory input.

scholarly journals Working memory gates visual input to primate prefrontal neurons

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Behrad Noudoost ◽  
Kelsey Lynne Clark ◽  
Tirin Moore
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
Neural Circuits ◽  
Visual Input ◽  
Visually Guided ◽  
Visual Neurons ◽  
Cortical Inputs ◽  
Behaving Monkeys ◽  
Visual Cortical

Visually guided behavior relies on the integration of sensory input and information held in working memory (WM). Yet it remains unclear how this is accomplished at the level of neural circuits. We studied the direct visual cortical inputs to neurons within a visuomotor area of prefrontal cortex in behaving monkeys. We show that the efficacy of visual input to prefrontal cortex is gated by information held in WM. Surprisingly, visual input to prefrontal neurons was found to target those with both visual and motor properties, rather than preferentially targeting other visual neurons. Furthermore, activity evoked from visual cortex was larger in magnitude, more synchronous, and more rapid, when monkeys remembered locations that matched the location of visual input. These results indicate that WM directly influences the circuitry that transforms visual input into visually guided behavior.

scholarly journals Independent Components of Color Natural Scenes Resemble V1 Neurons in Their Spatial and Color Tuning

2004 ◽  
Vol 91 (6) ◽  
pp. 2859-2873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Caywood ◽  
Benjamin Willmore ◽  
David J. Tolhurst
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
Independent Component ◽  
Natural Scenes ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Color Coding ◽  
Visual Code ◽  
Independent Components ◽  
V1 Neurons ◽  
Redundancy Reduction

It has been hypothesized that mammalian sensory systems are efficient because they reduce the redundancy of natural sensory input. If correct, this theory could unify our understanding of sensory coding; here, we test its predictions for color coding in the primate primary visual cortex (V1). We apply independent component analysis (ICA) to simulated cone responses to natural scenes, obtaining a set of colored independent component (IC) filters that form a redundancy-reducing visual code. We compare IC filters with physiologically measured V1 neurons, and find great spatial similarity between IC filters and V1 simple cells. On cursory inspection, there is little chromatic similarity; however, we find that many apparent differences result from biases in the physiological measurements and ICA analysis. After correcting these biases, we find that the chromatic tuning of IC filters does indeed resemble the population of V1 neurons, supporting the redundancy-reduction hypothesis.

scholarly journals Neural Correlates of Motion-induced Blindness in the Human Brain

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1235-1243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke L. Schölvinck ◽  
Geraint Rees
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Bistable Perception ◽  
Visual Phenomenon ◽  
High Level ◽  
Visual Cortical

Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is a visual phenomenon in which highly salient visual targets spontaneously disappear from visual awareness (and subsequently reappear) when superimposed on a moving background of distracters. Such fluctuations in awareness of the targets, although they remain physically present, provide an ideal paradigm to study the neural correlates of visual awareness. Existing behavioral data on MIB are consistent both with a role for structures early in visual processing and with involvement of high-level visual processes. To further investigate this issue, we used high field functional MRI to investigate signals in human low-level visual cortex and motion-sensitive area V5/MT while participants reported disappearance and reappearance of an MIB target. Surprisingly, perceptual invisibility of the target was coupled to an increase in activity in low-level visual cortex plus area V5/MT compared with when the target was visible. This increase was largest in retinotopic regions representing the target location. One possibility is that our findings result from an active process of completion of the field of distracters that acts locally in the visual cortex, coupled to a more global process that facilitates invisibility in general visual cortex. Our findings show that the earliest anatomical stages of human visual cortical processing are implicated in MIB, as with other forms of bistable perception.

scholarly journals Characterization of Feedback Neurons in the High-Level Visual Cortical Areas That Project Directly to the Primary Visual Cortex in the Cat

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huijun Pan ◽  
Shen Zhang ◽  
Deng Pan ◽  
Zheng Ye ◽  
Hao Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Area 21A ◽  
High Level ◽  
Visual Cortical

Previous studies indicate that top-down influence plays a critical role in visual information processing and perceptual detection. However, the substrate that carries top-down influence remains poorly understood. Using a combined technique of retrograde neuronal tracing and immunofluorescent double labeling, we characterized the distribution and cell type of feedback neurons in cat’s high-level visual cortical areas that send direct connections to the primary visual cortex (V1: area 17). Our results showed: (1) the high-level visual cortex of area 21a at the ventral stream and PMLS area at the dorsal stream have a similar proportion of feedback neurons back projecting to the V1 area, (2) the distribution of feedback neurons in the higher-order visual area 21a and PMLS was significantly denser than in the intermediate visual cortex of area 19 and 18, (3) feedback neurons in all observed high-level visual cortex were found in layer II–III, IV, V, and VI, with a higher proportion in layer II–III, V, and VI than in layer IV, and (4) most feedback neurons were CaMKII-positive excitatory neurons, and few of them were identified as inhibitory GABAergic neurons. These results may argue against the segregation of ventral and dorsal streams during visual information processing, and support “reverse hierarchy theory” or interactive model proposing that recurrent connections between V1 and higher-order visual areas constitute the functional circuits that mediate visual perception. Also, the corticocortical feedback neurons from high-level visual cortical areas to the V1 area are mostly excitatory in nature.

scholarly journals Dark Rearing Promotes the Recovery of Visual Cortical Responses but Not the Morphology of Geniculocortical Axons in Amblyopic Cat

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takahiro Gotou ◽  
Katsuro Kameyama ◽  
Ayane Kobayashi ◽  
Kayoko Okamura ◽  
Takahiko Ando ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Visual Pathway ◽  
Monocular Deprivation ◽  
Postnatal Life ◽  
Visual Neurons ◽  
Cortical Responses ◽  
Soma Size ◽  
Visual Cortical ◽  
Dark Rearing

Monocular deprivation (MD) of vision during early postnatal life induces amblyopia, and most neurons in the primary visual cortex lose their responses to the closed eye. Anatomically, the somata of neurons in the closed-eye recipient layer of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) shrink and their axons projecting to the visual cortex retract. Although it has been difficult to restore visual acuity after maturation, recent studies in rodents and cats showed that a period of exposure to complete darkness could promote recovery from amblyopia induced by prior MD. However, in cats, which have an organization of central visual pathways similar to humans, the effect of dark rearing only improves monocular vision and does not restore binocular depth perception. To determine whether dark rearing can completely restore the visual pathway, we examined its effect on the three major concomitants of MD in individual visual neurons, eye preference of visual cortical neurons and soma size and axon morphology of LGN neurons. Dark rearing improved the recovery of visual cortical responses to the closed eye compared with the recovery under binocular conditions. However, geniculocortical axons serving the closed eye remained retracted after dark rearing, whereas reopening the closed eye restored the soma size of LGN neurons. These results indicate that dark rearing incompletely restores the visual pathway, and thus exerts a limited restorative effect on visual function.

Serial Functional Imaging Poststroke Reveals Visual Cortex Reorganization

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Brodtmann ◽  
Aina Puce ◽  
David Darby ◽  
Geoffrey Donnan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Patient Activation ◽  
Cortical Reorganization ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Extrastriate Cortex ◽  
Visual Rehabilitation ◽  
Healthy Control ◽  
High Level ◽  
Visual Cortical

Purpose. Visual cortical reorganization following injury remains poorly understood. The authors performed serial functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on patients with visual cortex infarction to evaluate early and late striate, ventral, and dorsal extrastriate cortical activation. Methods. Patients were studied with fMRI within 10 days and at 6 months. The authors used a high-level visual activation task designed to activate the ventral extrastriate cortex. These data were compared to those of age-appropriate healthy control participants. Results. The results from 24 healthy control individuals (mean age 65.7 ± SE 3.6 years, range 32-89) were compared to those from 5 stroke patients (mean age 73.8 ± SE 7 years, range 49-86). Patients had infarcts involving the striate and ventral extrastriate cortex. Patient activation patterns were markedly different to controls. Bilateral striate and ventral extrastriate activation was reduced at both sessions, but dorsal extrastriate activated voxel counts remained comparable to controls. Conversely, mean percent magnetic resonance signal change increased in dorsal sites. Conclusions. These data provide strong evidence of bilateral poststroke functional depression of striate and ventral extrastriate cortices. Possible utilization or surrogacy of the dorsal visual system was demonstrated following stroke. This activity could provide a target for novel visual rehabilitation therapies.

scholarly journals Distributed and Retinotopically Asymmetric Processing of Coherent Motion in Mouse Visual Cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin K. Sit ◽  
Michael J. Goard
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Dorsal Stream ◽  
Coherent Motion ◽  
Motion Processing ◽  
Calcium Indicator ◽  
Mouse Cortex ◽  
Visual Areas ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Visual Cortical

ABSTRACTPerception of visual motion is important for a range of ethological behaviors in mammals. In primates, specific higher visual cortical regions are specialized for processing of coherent visual motion. However, the distribution of motion processing among visual cortical areas in mice is unclear, despite the powerful genetic tools available for measuring population neural activity. Here, we used widefield and 2-photon calcium imaging of transgenic mice expressing a calcium indicator in excitatory neurons to measure mesoscale and cellular responses to coherent motion across the visual cortex. Imaging of primary visual cortex (V1) and several higher visual areas (HVAs) during presentation of natural movies and random dot kinematograms (RDKs) revealed heterogeneous responses to coherent motion. Although coherent motion responses were observed throughout visual cortex, particular HVAs in the putative dorsal stream (PM, AL, AM) exhibited stronger responses than ventral stream areas (LM and LI). Moreover, beyond the differences between visual areas, there was considerable heterogeneity within each visual area. Individual visual areas exhibited an asymmetry across the vertical retinotopic axis (visual elevation), such that neurons representing the inferior visual field exhibited greater responses to coherent motion. These results indicate that processing of visual motion in mouse cortex is distributed unevenly across visual areas and exhibits a spatial bias within areas, potentially to support processing of optic flow during spatial navigation.

scholarly journals Characterization of nonlinear receptive fields of visual neurons by convolutional neural network

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jumpei Ukita ◽  
Takashi Yoshida ◽  
Kenichi Ohki
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Nonlinear Response ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Natural Images ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Rotation Invariant ◽  
Visual Neurons ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
V1 Neurons

AbstractA comprehensive understanding of the stimulus-response properties of individual neurons is necessary to crack the neural code of sensory cortices. However, a barrier to achieving this goal is the difficulty of analyzing the nonlinearity of neuronal responses. In computer vision, artificial neural networks, especially convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in image recognition by capturing the higher-order statistics of natural images. Here, we incorporated CNN for encoding models of neurons in the visual cortex to develop a new method of nonlinear response characterization, especially nonlinear estimation of receptive fields (RFs), without assumptions regarding the type of nonlinearity. Briefly, after training CNN to predict the visual responses of neurons to natural images, we synthesized the RF image such that the image would predictively evoke a maximum response (“maximization-of-activation” method). We first demonstrated the proof-of-principle using a dataset of simulated cells with various types of nonlinearity, revealing that CNN could be used to estimate the nonlinear RF of simulated cells. In particular, we could visualize various types of nonlinearity underlying the responses, such as shift-invariant RFs or rotation-invariant RFs. These results suggest that the method may be applicable to neurons with complex nonlinearities, such as rotation-invariant neurons in higher visual areas. Next, we applied the method to a dataset of neurons in the mouse primary visual cortex (V1) whose responses to natural images were recorded via two-photon Ca2+ imaging. We could visualize shift-invariant RFs with Gabor-like shapes for some V1 neurons. By quantifying the degree of shift-invariance, each V1 neuron was classified as either a shift-variant (simple) cell or shift-invariant (complex-like) cell, and these two types of neurons were not clustered in cortical space. These results suggest that the novel CNN encoding model is useful in nonlinear response analyses of visual neurons and potentially of any sensory neurons.

scholarly journals Sound induces change in orientation preference of V1 neurons: Audio-visual cross-influence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nayan Chanauria ◽  
Vishal Bharmauria ◽  
Lyes Bachatene ◽  
Sarah Cattan ◽  
Jean Rouat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Auditory Stimulus ◽  
Orientation Tuning ◽  
List Type ◽  
Visual Neurons ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Tuning Curves ◽  
Firing Rates ◽  
V1 Neurons ◽  
The Individual

AbstractIn the cortex, demarcated unimodal sensory regions often respond to unforeseen sensory stimuli and exhibit plasticity. The goal of the current investigation was to test evoked responses of primary visual cortex (V1) neurons when an adapting auditory stimulus is applied in isolation. Using extracellular recordings in anesthetized cats, we demonstrate that, unlike the prevailing observation of only slight modulations in the firing rates of the neurons, sound imposition in isolation entirely shifted the peaks of orientation tuning curves of neurons in both supra- and infragranular layers of V1. Our results suggest that neurons specific to either layer dynamically integrate features of sound and modify the organization of the orientation map of V1. Intriguingly, these experiments present novel findings that the mere presentation of a prolonged auditory stimulus may drastically recalibrate the tuning properties of the visual neurons and highlight the phenomenal neuroplasticity of V1 neurons.HighlightsProlonged application of sound shifts preferred orientation of neurons in area 17 of cats.Orientation tuning shifts in the individual neurons in supra- and infragranular layers of V1.Supra- and infragranular layers of V1 operate together but also as distinct compartments following sound adaptation.Visual cortex is specifically and dynamically impacted by non-visual stimuli.Sound adaptation certainly modifies the organization of orientation maps in V1.

scholarly journals Visual Cortical Area MT is Required for Development of the Dorsal Stream and Associated Visuomotor Behaviours

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Kwan ◽  
Chia-Kang Chang ◽  
Hsin-Hao Yu ◽  
Inaki C. Mundinano ◽  
Dylan M. Fox ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Dorsal Stream ◽  
Visually Guided ◽  
Area Mt ◽  
V1 Neurons ◽  
Visual Cortical Area ◽  
Direction Sensitivity ◽  
Visual Cortical ◽  
And Function

AbstractThe middle temporal (MT) area of the extrastriate visual cortex has long been studied in adulthood for its distinctive physiological properties and function as a part of the dorsal stream, yet interestingly possesses a similar maturation profile as the primary visual cortex (V1). Here we examined whether an early-life lesion of MT altered the dorsal stream development and the behavioural precision of reaching to grasp sequences. We observed permanent changes in the anatomy of cortices associated with both reaching (PE and MIP) and grasping (AIP), as well as in reaching and grasping behaviours. In addition, we observed a significant impact on the anatomy of V1 and the direction sensitivity of V1 neurons in the lesion projection zone. These findings indicate that area MT is a crucial node for the development of the primate vision, impacting both V1 and areas in the dorsal visual pathway known to mediate visually guided manual behaviours.TeaserThe early life loss of visual area MT leads to significant anatomical, physiological and behavioural changes.

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