ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理科学进展 ›› 2017, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (suppl.): 64-64.

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 The Influence of Two Figures for Figure–Ground Segmentation in the Thalamus

 Ian Max Andolina a; Wei Wang a; Stewart S. Shipp b   

  1. a Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yueyang Road, Xuhui Dist., Shanghai, China, 200031
    b UCL Inst. of Ophthalmology, 11-43 Bath Street, London, UK
  • 出版日期:2017-08-26 发布日期:2017-08-13
  • 通讯作者: Ian Max Andolina: i.andolina@ion.ac.cn E-mail:i.andolina@ion.ac.cn
  • 基金资助:
     

 

    

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  • Online:2017-08-26 Published:2017-08-13
  • Supported by:
     

摘要:  PURPOSE: A core function for any visual system (biological and artificial) is recognising objects by grouping and filling-in image elements as a figure and segregating them from the background. Neural mechanisms of Figure–Ground (F–G) segmentation have been linked to processes operating across several cortical areas including primary visual cortex (V1), and depend heavily on re-entrant feedback connections. F–G is thought to be a cortical phenomenon, however we recently observed strong F–G modulation in the earliest visual area in the brain, the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (LGN). Our previous study assumed that F–G segmentation observed in the LGN was mostly stimulus, and not task driven. By adding a second figure target, we wished to test whether this was the case.
METHODS: We performed tetrode recordings of spiking and local field potentials (LFP) in behaving macaque dLGN. We used speeded reaction–time where the subject had to find, and then saccade to either of two moving-dot defined visual figural objects against a moving background. The choice depended on a simple distance metric.
RESULTS: When we divide attentional demand across two figural objects, we find that LGN cells are differentially driven by both the visual component and the saccaded to location of the task. LFP signal analysis suggests this task activity is driven predominantly within the α–band.
CONCLUSIONS: We find that relay cells in the LGN respond not only to the visual cues alone, but also exhibit differential activity whether the figural object was going to be chosen for a subsequent saccade or not. The α–band dominated LFP suggests feedback as the most parsimonious route of this task driven modulation. Future experiments aim to orthogonally control spatial and feature attention while causally manipulating the feedback using optogenetic approaches.

关键词:  perception, figure-ground, LGN, attention, top-down

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