Receptive field properties of neurons in the macaque anterior intraparietal area

Visual object information is necessary for grasping. In primates, the anterior intraparietal area (AIP) plays an essential role in visually guided grasping. Neurons in AIP encode features of objects, but no study has systematically investigated the receptive field (RF) of AIP neurons. We mapped the RF of posterior AIP (pAIP) neurons in the central visual field, using images of objects and small line fragments that evoked robust responses, together with less effective stimuli. The RF sizes we measured varied between 3°2 and 90°2, with the highest response either at the fixation point or at parafoveal positions. A large fraction of pAIP neurons showed nonuniform RFs, with multiple local maxima in both ipsilateral and contralateral hemifields. Moreover, the RF profile could depend strongly on the stimulus used to map the RF. Highly similar results were obtained with the smallest stimulus that evoked reliable responses (line fragments measuring 1–2°). The nonuniformity and dependence of the RF profile on the stimulus in pAIP were comparable to previous observations in the anterior part of the lateral intraparietal area (aLIP), but the average RF of pAIP neurons was located at the fovea whereas the average RF of aLIP neurons was located parafoveally. Thus nonuniformity and stimulus dependence of the RF may represent general RF properties of neurons in the dorsal visual stream involved in object analysis, which contrast markedly with those of neurons in the ventral visual stream.

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Grasping Execution and Grasping Observation Activity of Single Neurons in the Macaque Anterior Intraparietal Area

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00647 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (10) ◽

pp. 2342-2355 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

Author(s):

Pierpaolo Pani ◽

Tom Theys ◽

Maria C. Romero ◽

Peter Janssen

Keyword(s):

Visual Field ◽

Premotor Cortex ◽

Visually Guided ◽

Simple Shape ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Person Perspective ◽

First Person Perspective ◽

Dorsal Visual Stream ◽

Passive Fixation

Primates use vision to guide their actions in everyday life. Visually guided object grasping is known to rely on a network of cortical areas located in the parietal and premotor cortex. We recorded in the anterior intraparietal area (AIP), an area in the dorsal visual stream that is critical for object grasping and densely connected with the premotor cortex, while monkeys were grasping objects under visual guidance and during passive fixation of videos of grasping actions from the first-person perspective. All AIP neurons in this study responded during grasping execution in the light, that is, became more active after the hand had started to move toward the object and during grasping in the dark. More than half of these AIP neurons responded during the observation of a video of the same grasping actions on a display. Furthermore, these AIP neurons responded as strongly during passive fixation of movements of a hand on a scrambled background and to a lesser extent to a shape appearing within the visual field near the object. Therefore, AIP neurons responding during grasping execution also respond during passive observation of grasping actions and most of them even during passive observation of movements of a simple shape in the visual field.

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Wiring Up Vision: Minimizing Supervised Synaptic Updates Needed to Produce a Primate Ventral Stream

10.1101/2020.06.08.140111 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Franziska Geiger ◽

Martin Schrimpf ◽

Tiago Marques ◽

James J. DiCarlo

Keyword(s):

Visual System ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Ventral Stream ◽

Visual Object ◽

Visual Object Recognition ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Ongoing Research ◽

Ventral Visual Stream ◽

And Behavior ◽

The Brain

AbstractAfter training on large datasets, certain deep neural networks are surprisingly good models of the neural mechanisms of adult primate visual object recognition. Nevertheless, these models are poor models of the development of the visual system because they posit millions of sequential, precisely coordinated synaptic updates, each based on a labeled image. While ongoing research is pursuing the use of unsupervised proxies for labels, we here explore a complementary strategy of reducing the required number of supervised synaptic updates to produce an adult-like ventral visual stream (as judged by the match to V1, V2, V4, IT, and behavior). Such models might require less precise machinery and energy expenditure to coordinate these updates and would thus move us closer to viable neuroscientific hypotheses about how the visual system wires itself up. Relative to the current leading model of the adult ventral stream, we here demonstrate that the total number of supervised weight updates can be substantially reduced using three complementary strategies: First, we find that only 2% of supervised updates (epochs and images) are needed to achieve ~80% of the match to adult ventral stream. Second, by improving the random distribution of synaptic connectivity, we find that 54% of the brain match can already be achieved “at birth” (i.e. no training at all). Third, we find that, by training only ~5% of model synapses, we can still achieve nearly 80% of the match to the ventral stream. When these three strategies are applied in combination, we find that these new models achieve ~80% of a fully trained model’s match to the brain, while using two orders of magnitude fewer supervised synaptic updates. These results reflect first steps in modeling not just primate adult visual processing during inference, but also how the ventral visual stream might be “wired up” by evolution (a model’s “birth” state) and by developmental learning (a model’s updates based on visual experience).

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Action-specific feature processing in the human visual cortex

10.1101/420760 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Simona Monaco ◽

Ying Chen ◽

Nicholas Menghi ◽

J Douglas Crawford

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Primary Visual Cortex ◽

Visual Information ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Action Planning ◽

Inferior Temporal Cortex ◽

Visual Object ◽

Cortical Processing ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Dorsal Visual Stream

AbstractSensorimotor integration involves feedforward and reentrant processing of sensory input. Grasp-related motor activity precedes and is thought to influence visual object processing. Yet, while the importance of reentrant feedback is well established in perception, the top-down modulations for action and the neural circuits involved in this process have received less attention. Do action-specific intentions influence the processing of visual information in the human cortex? Using a cue-separation fMRI paradigm, we found that action-specific instruction (manual alignment vs. grasp) influences the cortical processing of object orientation several seconds after the object had been viewed. This influence occurred as early as in the primary visual cortex and extended to ventral and dorsal visual stream areas. Importantly, this modulation was unrelated to non-specific action planning. Further, the primary visual cortex showed stronger functional connectivity with frontal-parietal areas and the inferior temporal cortex during the delay following orientation processing for align than grasping movements, strengthening the idea of reentrant feedback from dorsal visual stream areas involved in action. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that intended manual actions have such an early, pervasive, and differential influence on the cortical processing of vision.

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fMRI Reveals How Pain Modulates Visual Object Processing in the Ventral Visual Stream

Neuron ◽

10.1016/j.neuron.2007.05.032 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 157-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 88

Author(s):

Ulrike Bingel ◽

Michael Rose ◽

Jan Gläscher ◽

Christian Büchel

Keyword(s):

Visual Object ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Object Processing ◽

Ventral Visual Stream

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Functional Dissociations within the Ventral Object Processing Pathway: Cognitive Modules or a Hierarchical Continuum?

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2009.21373 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 22 (11) ◽

pp. 2460-2479 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

Rosemary A. Cowell ◽

Timothy J. Bussey ◽

Lisa M. Saksida

Keyword(s):

Visual Perception ◽

Temporal Lobe ◽

Visual Discrimination ◽

Visual Memory ◽

Modular Organization ◽

Visual Object ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Object Processing ◽

Double Dissociation ◽

Ventral Visual Stream

We examined the organization and function of the ventral object processing pathway. The prevailing theoretical approach in this field holds that the ventral object processing stream has a modular organization, in which visual perception is carried out in posterior regions and visual memory is carried out, independently, in the anterior temporal lobe. In contrast, recent work has argued against this modular framework, favoring instead a continuous, hierarchical account of cognitive processing in these regions. We join the latter group and illustrate our view with simulations from a computational model that extends the perceptual-mnemonic feature-conjunction model of visual discrimination proposed by Bussey and Saksida [Bussey, T. J., & Saksida, L. M. The organization of visual object representations: A connectionist model of effects of lesions in perirhinal cortex. European Journal of Neuroscience, 15, 355–364, 2002]. We use the extended model to revisit early data from Iwai and Mishkin [Iwai, E., & Mishkin, M. Two visual foci in the temporal lobe of monkeys. In N. Yoshii & N. Buchwald (Eds.), Neurophysiological basis of learning and behavior (pp. 1–11). Japan: Osaka University Press, 1968]; this seminal study was interpreted as evidence for the modularity of visual perception and visual memory. The model accounts for a double dissociation in monkeys' visual discrimination performance following lesions to different regions of the ventral visual stream. This double dissociation is frequently cited as evidence for separate systems for perception and memory. However, the model provides a parsimonious, mechanistic, single-system account of the double dissociation data. We propose that the effects of lesions in ventral visual stream on visual discrimination are due to compromised representations within a hierarchical representational continuum rather than impairment in a specific type of learning, memory, or perception. We argue that consideration of the nature of stimulus representations and their processing in cortex is a more fruitful approach than attempting to map cognition onto functional modules.

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Perceptual processing in the ventral visual stream requires area TE but not rhinal cortex

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.36310 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mark AG Eldridge ◽

Narihisa Matsumoto ◽

John H Wittig ◽

Evan C Masseau ◽

Richard C Saunders ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Final Stage ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Visual Object ◽

Short Term ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Term Memory ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Rhinal Cortex ◽

Ventral Visual Stream ◽

Area Te

There is an on-going debate over whether area TE, or the anatomically adjacent rhinal cortex, is the final stage of visual object processing. Both regions have been implicated in visual perception, but their involvement in non-perceptual functions, such as short-term memory, hinders clear-cut interpretation. Here, using a two-interval forced choice task without a short-term memory demand, we find that after bilateral removal of area TE, monkeys trained to categorize images based on perceptual similarity (morphs between dogs and cats), are, on the initial viewing, badly impaired when given a new set of images. They improve markedly with a small amount of practice but nonetheless remain moderately impaired indefinitely. The monkeys with bilateral removal of rhinal cortex are, under all conditions, indistinguishable from unoperated controls. We conclude that the final stage of the integration of visual perceptual information into object percepts in the ventral visual stream occurs in area TE.

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Using Convolutional Neural Networks to measure the contribution of visual features to the representation of object animacy in the brain

10.31237/osf.io/fxz4q ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sushrut Thorat

Keyword(s):

Neural Networks ◽

Convolutional Neural Networks ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Large Degree ◽

Visual Features ◽

Visual Feature ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Feature Information ◽

Ventral Visual Stream ◽

Animal Images

A mediolateral gradation in neural responses for images spanning animals to artificial objects is observed in the ventral temporal cortex (VTC). Which information streams drive this organisation is an ongoing debate. Recently, in Proklova et al. (2016), the visual shape and category (“animacy”) dimensions in a set of stimuli were dissociated using a behavioural measure of visual feature information. fMRI responses revealed a neural cluster (extra-visual animacy cluster - xVAC) which encoded category information unexplained by visual feature information, suggesting extra-visual contributions to the organisation in the ventral visual stream. We reassess these findings using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) as models for the ventral visual stream. The visual features developed in the CNN layers can categorise the shape-matched stimuli from Proklova et al. (2016) in contrast to the behavioural measures used in the study. The category organisations in xVAC and VTC are explained to a large degree by the CNN visual feature differences, casting doubt over the suggestion that visual feature differences cannot account for the animacy organisation. To inform the debate further, we designed a set of stimuli with animal images to dissociate the animacy organisation driven by the CNN visual features from the degree of familiarity and agency (thoughtfulness and feelings). Preliminary results from a new fMRI experiment designed to understand the contribution of these non-visual features are presented.

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Visuopathy of prematurity: is retinopathy just the tip of the iceberg?

Pediatric Research ◽

10.1038/s41390-021-01625-0 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sigrid Hegna Ingvaldsen ◽

Tora Sund Morken ◽

Dordi Austeng ◽

Olaf Dammann

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Structural Changes ◽

Developmental Trajectories ◽

Visual Pathway ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Visual Deficits ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Cellular Architecture ◽

Increased Risk ◽

Dorsal Visual Stream

AbstractResearch on retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) focuses mainly on the abnormal vascularization patterns that are directly visible for ophthalmologists. However, recent findings indicate that children born prematurely also exhibit changes in the retinal cellular architecture and along the dorsal visual stream, such as structural changes between and within cortical areas. Moreover, perinatal sustained systemic inflammation (SSI) is associated with an increased risk for ROP and the visual deficits that follow. In this paper, we propose that ROP might just be the tip of an iceberg we call visuopathy of prematurity (VOP). The VOP paradigm comprises abnormal vascularization of the retina, alterations in retinal cellular architecture, choroidal degeneration, and abnormalities in the visual pathway, including cortical areas. Furthermore, VOP itself might influence the developmental trajectories of cerebral structures and functions deemed responsible for visual processing, thereby explaining visual deficits among children born preterm.

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