Cross-orientation suppression in visual area V2

Object recognition relies on a series of transformations among which only the first cortical stage is relatively well understood. Already at the second stage, the visual area V2, the complexity of the transformation precludes a clear understanding of what specifically this area computes. Previous work has found multiple types of V2 neurons, with neurons of each type selective for multi-edge features. Here we analyse responses of V2 neurons to natural stimuli and find three organizing principles. First, the relevant edges for V2 neurons can be grouped into quadrature pairs, indicating invariance to local translation. Second, the excitatory edges have nearby suppressive edges with orthogonal orientations. Third, the resulting multi-edge patterns are repeated in space to form textures or texture boundaries. The cross-orientation suppression increases the sparseness of responses to natural images based on these complex forms of feature selectivity while allowing for multiple scales of position invariance.