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What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System

Traditionally, functional representations in early visual areas are conceived as retinotopic maps preserving ego-centric spatial location information while ensuring that other stimulus features are uniformly represented for all locations in space. Recent results challenge this framework of relativel...

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Autores principales: Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh, Fitzpatrick, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9039279/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35498372
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2022.834876
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author Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh
Fitzpatrick, David
author_facet Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh
Fitzpatrick, David
author_sort Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh
collection PubMed
description Traditionally, functional representations in early visual areas are conceived as retinotopic maps preserving ego-centric spatial location information while ensuring that other stimulus features are uniformly represented for all locations in space. Recent results challenge this framework of relatively independent encoding of location and features in the early visual system, emphasizing location-dependent feature sensitivities that reflect specialization of cortical circuits for different locations in visual space. Here we review the evidence for such location-specific encoding including: (1) systematic variation of functional properties within conventional retinotopic maps in the cortex; (2) novel periodic retinotopic transforms that dramatically illustrate the tight linkage of feature sensitivity, spatial location, and cortical circuitry; and (3) retinotopic biases in cortical areas, and groups of areas, that have been defined by their functional specializations. We propose that location-dependent feature sensitivity is a fundamental organizing principle of the visual system that achieves efficient representation of positional regularities in visual experience, and reflects the evolutionary selection of sensory and motor circuits to optimally represent behaviorally relevant information. Future studies are necessary to discover mechanisms underlying joint encoding of location and functional information, how this relates to behavior, emerges during development, and varies across species.
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spelling pubmed-90392792022-04-27 What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh Fitzpatrick, David Front Neural Circuits Neural Circuits Traditionally, functional representations in early visual areas are conceived as retinotopic maps preserving ego-centric spatial location information while ensuring that other stimulus features are uniformly represented for all locations in space. Recent results challenge this framework of relatively independent encoding of location and features in the early visual system, emphasizing location-dependent feature sensitivities that reflect specialization of cortical circuits for different locations in visual space. Here we review the evidence for such location-specific encoding including: (1) systematic variation of functional properties within conventional retinotopic maps in the cortex; (2) novel periodic retinotopic transforms that dramatically illustrate the tight linkage of feature sensitivity, spatial location, and cortical circuitry; and (3) retinotopic biases in cortical areas, and groups of areas, that have been defined by their functional specializations. We propose that location-dependent feature sensitivity is a fundamental organizing principle of the visual system that achieves efficient representation of positional regularities in visual experience, and reflects the evolutionary selection of sensory and motor circuits to optimally represent behaviorally relevant information. Future studies are necessary to discover mechanisms underlying joint encoding of location and functional information, how this relates to behavior, emerges during development, and varies across species. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9039279/ /pubmed/35498372 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2022.834876 Text en Copyright © 2022 Sedigh-Sarvestani and Fitzpatrick. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neural Circuits
Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh
Fitzpatrick, David
What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System
title What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System
title_full What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System
title_fullStr What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System
title_full_unstemmed What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System
title_short What and Where: Location-Dependent Feature Sensitivity as a Canonical Organizing Principle of the Visual System
title_sort what and where: location-dependent feature sensitivity as a canonical organizing principle of the visual system
topic Neural Circuits
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9039279/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35498372
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2022.834876
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