V1 response timing and surface filling-in.
There is ample evidence from demonstrations such as color induction and stabilized images that information from surface boundaries plays a special role in determining the perception of surface interiors. Surface interiors appear to "fill-in." Psychophysical experiments also show that surface perception involves a slow scale-dependent process distinct from mechanisms involved in contour perception. The present experiments aimed to test the hypothesis that surface perception is associated with relatively slow scale-dependent neural filling-in. We found that responses in macaque primary visual cortex (V1) are slower to surface interiors than responses to optimal bar stimuli. Moreover, we found that the response to a surface interior is delayed relative to the response to the surface's border and the extent of the delay is proportional to the distance between a receptive field and the border. These findings are consistent with some forms of neural filling-in and suggest that V1 may provide the neural substrate for perceptual filling-in.
Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 02912, USA.
Xin
X
Huang
Michael A
MA
Paradiso
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*