title: Primary visual cortex represents the difference between past and present.
abstract: The visual system is confronted with rapidly changing stimuli in everyday life. It is not well understood how information in such a stream of input is updated within the brain. We performed voltage-sensitive dye imaging across the primary visual cortex (V1) to capture responses to sequences of natural scene contours. We presented vertically and horizontally filtered natural images, and their superpositions, at 10 or 33 Hz. At low frequency, the encoding was found to represent not the currently presented images, but differences in orientation between consecutive images. This was in sharp contrast to more rapid sequences for which we found an ongoing representation of current input, consistent with earlier studies. Our finding that for slower image sequences, V1 does no longer report actual features but represents their relative difference in time counteracts the view that the first cortical processing stage must always transfer complete information. Instead, we show its capacities for change detection with a new emphasis on the role of automatic computation evolving in the 100-ms range, inevitably affecting information transmission further downstream.
authors.affiliation: Optical Imaging Group, Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany Bernstein Group for Computational Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany.
authors.forename: Nora
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nortmann
authors.affiliation: Optical Imaging Group, Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany Bernstein Group for Computational Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Sascha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rekauzke
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany.
authors.forename: Selim
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Onat
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: König
authors.affiliation: Optical Imaging Group, Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany Bernstein Group for Computational Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jancke
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D013997:Time Factors; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D056969:Voltage-Sensitive Dye Imaging
keywords: early visual cortex; information transmission; natural image processing; orientation difference detection; predictive coding