Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:28:39.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Basic visual capacities and shape discrimination after lesions of extrastriate area V4 in macaques

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2009

William H. Merigan
William H. Merigan
Affiliation:
Department of Ophthalmology and Center for Visual Science, University of Rochester, Rochester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

lbotenic acid lesions were made in four macaque monkeys in a region of cortical area V4 that corresponds to the lower quadrant of one hemifield. For visual testing, fixation locus was monitoredwith scleral search coils and controlled behaviorally to place test stimuli either in the lesionedquadrant or in a control location in the opposite hemifield. Some basic visual capacities were slightly altered by the lesions; there was a two-fold reduction of luminance contrast sensitivity as well as red-green chromatic contrast sensitivity, both tested with stationary gratings. On the other hand, little or no loss was found when contrast sensitivity for detection or direction discrimination was tested with 10–Hz drifting gratings nor was there a reliable change in visual acuity. Hue and luminance matching were tested with a spatially more complex matching-to-sample task, but monkeys could not learn this task in the visual field locus of a V4 lesion. If previously trained at this locus, performance was not affected by the lesion. In contrast to the small effects on basic visual capabilities, performance on two form discrimination tasks was devastated by V4 lesions. The first involved discriminating the orientation of colinear groups of dots on a background of randomly placed dots. The second involved discriminating the orientation of a group of three line segments surrounded by differently oriented line segments. Some selectivity of the deficitsfor form discrimination was shown by the lack of an effect of the lesions on a global motion discrimination. These results show that while V4 lesions cause only slight disruptions of basic visual capacities, they profoundly disrupt form discriminations.

Keywords

Contrast sensitivityHue discriminationTexture discriminationArea V4Macaque
Type
Research Articles
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 51 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baizer, J.S., Ungerleider, L.G. & Desimone, R. (1991). Organization of visual inputs to the inferior temporal and posterior parietal cortex in monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience 11, 168–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boussaoud, D., Desimone, R. & Ungerleider, L.G. (1991). Visual topography of area TEO in the macaque. Journal of Comparative Neurology 306, 554–575.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dean, P. (1979). Visual cortex ablation and thresholds for successively presented stimuli in rhesus monkeys: Hue. Experimental Brain Research 35, 69–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Desimone, R., Li, L., Lehky, S., Ungerleider, L.G. & Mishkin, M. (1990). Effects of V4 lesions on visual discrimination performance and responses of neurons in inferior temporal cortex. Neuroscience Abstracts 16, 621.Google Scholar
Desimone, R., Moran, J., Schein, S. & Mishkin, M. (1993). A role for the corpus callosum in visual area V4 of the macaque. Visual Neuroscience 10, 159–171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeYoe, E.G. & Van Essen, D.C. (1985). Segregation of efferent connections and receptive field properties in visual area V2 of the macaque. Nature 317, 58–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duffy, C. & Wurtz, R. (1991). Sensitivity of MST neurons to optic flow stimuli. 1. A continuum of response selectivity to large-field stimuli. Journal of Neurophysiology 65, 1329–1345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Finney, D.J. (1971). Probit Analysis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gallyas, F. (1979). Silver staining of myelin by means of physical development. Neurology Research 1, 203–209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gatass, R., Sousa, A.P.B. & Gross, C.G. (1988). Visuotopic organization and extent of V3 and V4 of the macaque. Journal of Neuroscience 8, 1831–1845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, C.G. (1973). Visual functions of inferotemporal cortex. In Handbook of Sensory Physiology, Vol 7/3b, Central Visual Information, ed. Jung, R., pp. 451–482. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Gross, C.G., Rocha-Miranda, C.E. & Bender, D. (1972). Visual properties of neurons in inferotemporal cortex of the macaque. Journal of Neurophysiology 35, 96–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haenny, P.E., Maunsell, J.H.R. & Schiller, P.H. (1988). State dependent activity in monkey visual cortex: II Retinal and extraretinal factors in V4. Experimental Brain Research 69, 245–259.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heywood, C.A. & Cowey, A. (1987). On the role of cortical area V4 in the discrimination of hue and pattern in macaque monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience 7, 2601–2617.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heywood, C.A., Gadotti, A. & Cowey, A. (1992). Cortical area V4 and its role in the perception of color. Journal of Neuroscience 12, 4056–4065.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Judge, S.J., Richmond, B.J. & Chu, F.C. (1980). Implantation of magnetic search coils for measurement of eye position: An improved method. Vision Research 20, 535–538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krauskopf, J., Williams, D.R. & Heeley, D.W. (1982). Cardinal directions of color space. Vision Research 22, 1123–1131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merigan, W. (1989). Chromatic and achromatic vision of macaques: Role of the P pathway. Journal of Neuroscience 9, 776–783.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merigan, W.H., Byrne, C.E. & Maunsell, J.H.R. (1991 a). Does primate motion perception depend on the magnocellular pathway? Journal of Neuroscience 11, 3422–3429.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merigan, W.H. & Katz, L.M. (1990). Spatial resolution across the macaque retina. Vision Research 30, 985–991.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merigan, W.H., Katz, L.M. & Maunsell, J.H.R. (1991 b). The effects of parvocellular lateral geniculate lesions on the acuity and contrast sensitivity of macaque monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience 11, 994–1001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merigan, W.H., Nealey, T.A. & Maunsell, J.H.R. (1993). Visual effects of lesions of cortical area V2 in macaques. Journal of Neuroscience 11, 994–1001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moran, J. & Desimone, R. (1985). Selective attention gates visual processing in the extrastriate cortex. Science 229, 782–784.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pasternak, T., Horn, K.M. & Maunsell, J.H.R. (1989). Deficits in speed discrimination following lesions of the lateral suprasylvian cortex in the cat. Visual Neuroscience 3, 365–375.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pasternak, T. & Merigan, W.H. (1994). Motion perception following lesions of the superior temporal sulcus in the monkey. Cerebral Cortex 4, 247–259.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pelli, D.G. (1985). Uncertainty explains many aspects of visual contrast detection and discrimination. Journal of the Optical Society of America A2, 1508–1532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiller, P. (1993). The effects of V4 and middle temporal (MT) area lesions on visual performance in the rhesus monkey. Visual Neuroscience 10, 717–746.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schiller, P. & Lee, K. (1991). The role of the primate extrastriate area V4 in vision. Science 251, 1251–1253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sclar, G., Maunsell, J.H.R. & Lennie, P. (1990). Coding of image contrast in the central visual pathways of the macaque monkey. Vision Research 30, 1–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shipp, S. & Zeki, S. (1985). Segregation of pathways leading from area V2 to areas V4 and V5 of macaque monkey visual cortex. Nature 315, 322–325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Essen, D.C. & Maunsell, J.H.R. (1980). Two-dimensional maps of the cerebral cortex. Journal of Comparative Neurology 191, 255–281.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Victor, J.D., Maiese, K., Shapley, R., Sidtis, J. & Gazzaniga, M.S. (1989). Acquired central dyschromatopsia: Analysis of a case with preservation of color discrimination. Clinical Visual Science 4, 183–196.Google Scholar
Walsh, V., Butler, S.R., Carden, D. & Kulikowski, J.J. (1992). The effects of V4 lesions on visual abilities of macaques: Shape discrimination. Behavioral Brain Research 50, 115–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, A.B. (1990). Gain, noise, and contrast sensitivity of linear visual neurons. Visual Neuroscience 4, 147–157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, D.R. (1985). Aliasing in human foveal vision. Vision Research 25, 195–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wong-Riley, M. (1979). Changes in the visual system of monocularly sutured or enucleated cats demonstrable with cytochrome oxidase histochemistry. Brain Research 171, 11–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed