Center-surround inhibition and facilitation as a function of size and contrast at multiple levels of visual motion processing.
Visual context often plays a crucial role in visual processing. In the domain of visual motion processing, the response to a stimulus presented to a neuron's classical receptive field can be modulated by presenting stimuli to its surround. The nature of these center-surround interactions is often inhibitory; the neural response decreases when the same direction of motion is presented to center and surround. Here we use binocular rivalry as a tool to study center-surround interactions. We show that magnitude of surround suppression varies as a function of luminance contrast and surround width. Increasing the size of surround motion increased surround suppression at high contrast. Furthermore, large, high-contrast surrounds facilitated opposite-direction motion in the center. For stimuli presented at low contrast, surround suppression peaked at a smaller surround width. In addition, we provide evidence that surround inhibition occurs at multiple levels of visual processing: Surround inhibition in motion processing is likely to originate from both monocular and binocular processing stages.
Paffen
Chris L E
CL
Helmholtz Institute, Psychonomics Division, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. c.l.e.paffen@fss.uu.nl
van der Smagt
Maarten J
MJ
te Pas
Susan F
SF
Verstraten
Frans A J
FA
D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012858:Size Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D015348:Vision, Binocular