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Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization

The complexity of visual features for which neurons are tuned increases from early to late stages of the ventral visual stream. Thus, the standard hypothesis is that high-level functions like object categorization are primarily mediated by higher visual areas because they require more complex image...

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Autores principales: Kramer, Lily E., Chen, Yi-Chia, Long, Bria, Konkle, Talia, Cohen, Marlene R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10312552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37398251
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.31.541514
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author Kramer, Lily E.
Chen, Yi-Chia
Long, Bria
Konkle, Talia
Cohen, Marlene R.
author_facet Kramer, Lily E.
Chen, Yi-Chia
Long, Bria
Konkle, Talia
Cohen, Marlene R.
author_sort Kramer, Lily E.
collection PubMed
description The complexity of visual features for which neurons are tuned increases from early to late stages of the ventral visual stream. Thus, the standard hypothesis is that high-level functions like object categorization are primarily mediated by higher visual areas because they require more complex image formats that are not evident in early visual processing stages. However, human observers can categorize images as objects or animals or as big or small even when the images preserve only some low- and mid-level features but are rendered unidentifiable (‘texforms’, Long et al., 2018). This observation suggests that even the early visual cortex, in which neurons respond to simple stimulus features, may already encode signals about these more abstract high-level categorical distinctions. We tested this hypothesis by recording from populations of neurons in early and mid-level visual cortical areas while rhesus monkeys viewed texforms and their unaltered source stimuli (simultaneous recordings from areas V1 and V4 in one animal and separate recordings from V1 and V4 in two others). Using recordings from a few dozen neurons, we could decode the real-world size and animacy of both unaltered images and texforms. Furthermore, this neural decoding accuracy across stimuli was related to the ability of human observers to categorize texforms by real-world size and animacy. Our results demonstrate that neuronal populations early in the visual hierarchy contain signals useful for higher-level object perception and suggest that the responses of early visual areas to simple stimulus features display preliminary untangling of higher-level distinctions.
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spelling pubmed-103125522023-07-01 Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization Kramer, Lily E. Chen, Yi-Chia Long, Bria Konkle, Talia Cohen, Marlene R. bioRxiv Article The complexity of visual features for which neurons are tuned increases from early to late stages of the ventral visual stream. Thus, the standard hypothesis is that high-level functions like object categorization are primarily mediated by higher visual areas because they require more complex image formats that are not evident in early visual processing stages. However, human observers can categorize images as objects or animals or as big or small even when the images preserve only some low- and mid-level features but are rendered unidentifiable (‘texforms’, Long et al., 2018). This observation suggests that even the early visual cortex, in which neurons respond to simple stimulus features, may already encode signals about these more abstract high-level categorical distinctions. We tested this hypothesis by recording from populations of neurons in early and mid-level visual cortical areas while rhesus monkeys viewed texforms and their unaltered source stimuli (simultaneous recordings from areas V1 and V4 in one animal and separate recordings from V1 and V4 in two others). Using recordings from a few dozen neurons, we could decode the real-world size and animacy of both unaltered images and texforms. Furthermore, this neural decoding accuracy across stimuli was related to the ability of human observers to categorize texforms by real-world size and animacy. Our results demonstrate that neuronal populations early in the visual hierarchy contain signals useful for higher-level object perception and suggest that the responses of early visual areas to simple stimulus features display preliminary untangling of higher-level distinctions. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023-06-01 /pmc/articles/PMC10312552/ /pubmed/37398251 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.31.541514 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/) , which allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
spellingShingle Article
Kramer, Lily E.
Chen, Yi-Chia
Long, Bria
Konkle, Talia
Cohen, Marlene R.
Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
title Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
title_full Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
title_fullStr Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
title_full_unstemmed Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
title_short Contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
title_sort contributions of early and mid-level visual cortex to high-level object categorization
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10312552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37398251
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.31.541514
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