title: Figure-Ground Organization in Visual Cortex for Natural Scenes.
abstract: Figure-ground organization and border-ownership assignment are essential for understanding natural scenes. It has been shown that many neurons in the macaque visual cortex signal border-ownership in displays of simple geometric shapes such as squares, but how well these neurons resolve border-ownership in natural scenes is not known. We studied area V2 neurons in behaving macaques with static images of complex natural scenes. We found that about half of the neurons were border-ownership selective for contours in natural scenes, and this selectivity originated from the image context. The border-ownership signals emerged within 70 ms after stimulus onset, only ∼30 ms after response onset. A substantial fraction of neurons were highly consistent across scenes. Thus, the cortical mechanisms of figure-ground organization are fast and efficient even in images of complex natural scenes. Understanding how the brain performs this task so fast remains a challenge.
authors.affiliation: Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience , 1105 BA Amsterdam, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jonathan R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9178-2647
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Williford
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore, MD, 21218.
authors.forename: Rüdiger
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8741-813X
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: von der Heydt
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D008839:Microelectrodes; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: figure-ground; macaque; natural scenes; single units; visual cortex; visual perception