Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:29:15.916Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Artificial scotoma-induced perceptual distortions are orientation dependent and short lived

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2004

CHRIS TAILBY
Affiliation:
Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3052, Australia
ANDREW METHA
Affiliation:
Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3052, Australia

Abstract

Conditioning human observers with an “artificial scotoma”—a small retinal area deprived of patterned stimulation within a larger area of dynamically textured noise—results in contractions and expansions of perceived space that are thought to reflect receptive-field changes among cells in the primary visual cortex (Kapadia et al., 1994). Here we show that one-dimensional counter-phase flickering grating patterns are also potent stimuli for producing artificial scotomata capable of altering three-element bisection ability analogous to those results reported earlier. Moreover, we found that the magnitude of the induced spatial distortions depends critically on the relative orientations of peri-scotomatous and test-stimulus spatial contrast. In addition, the perceptual distortions are found to be relatively short lived, decaying within 660 ms. The results support the hypothesis that artificial scotoma-induced perceptual distortions are generated by dynamic alteration of connection efficacy within a network linking cortical areas of similar orientation specificity, consistent with established anatomical and physiological results.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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

Angelucci, A., Levitt, J.B., & Lund, J.S. (2002). Anatomical origins of the classical receptive field and modulatory surround field of single neurons in macaque visual cortical area V1. Progress in Brain Research 136, 373388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishop, P.O. & Henry, G.H. (1972). Striate Neurons: Receptive field concepts. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 11, 346354.Google Scholar
Bonds, A.B. (1991). Temporal dynamics of contrast gain in single cells of the cat striate cortex. Visual Neuroscience 6, 239255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosking, W.H., Zhang, Y., Schofield, B., & Fitzpatrick, D. (1997). Orientation selectivity and the arrangement of horizontal connections in tree shrew striate cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 17, 21122127.Google Scholar
Calford, M.B. & Tweedale, R. (1988). Immediate and chronic changes in responses of somatosensory cortex in adult flying-fox after digit amputation. Nature 332, 446448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavanaugh, J.R., Bair, W., & Movshon, J.A. (2002a). Nature and interaction of signals from the receptive field center and surround in macaque v1 neurons. Journal of Neurophysiology 88, 25302546.Google Scholar
Cavanaugh, J.R., Bair, W., & Movshon, J.A. (2002b). Selectivity and spatial distribution of signals from the receptive field surround in macaque v1 neurons. Journal of Neurophysiology 88, 25472556.Google Scholar
Chapman, B. & Stone, L.S. (1996). Turning a blind eye to cortical receptive fields. Neuron 16, 912.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeAngelis, G.C., Anzai, A., Ohzawa, I., & Freeman, R.D. (1995). Receptive field structure in the visual cortex: Does selective stimulation induce plasticity? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 92, 96829686.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dragoi, V., Sharma, J., Miller, E.K., & Sur, M. (2002). Dynamics of neuronal sensitivity in visual cortex and local feature discrimination. Nature Neuroscience 5, 883891.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Efron, B. & Tibshirani, R.J. (1993). An Introduction to the Bootstrap. New York: Chapman & Hall.CrossRef
Field, D.J., Hayes, A., & Hess, R.F. (1993). Contour integration by the human visual system: Evidence for a local “association field”. Vision Research 33, 173193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorani Junior, M., Rosa, M.G., Gattass, R., & Rocha-Miranda, C.E. (1992). Dynamic surrounds of receptive fields in primate striate cortex: A physiological basis for perceptual completion? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 89, 85478551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, C.D. & Wiesel, T.N. (1983). Clustered intrinsic connections in cat visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 3, 11161133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, C.D. & Wiesel, T.N. (1989). Columnar specificity of intrinsic horizontal and corticocortical connections in cat visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 9, 24322442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, C.D. & Wiesel, T.N. (1992). Receptive field dynamics in adult primary visual cortex. Nature 356, 150152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heeger, D.J. (1992). Normalization of cell responses in cat striate cortex. Visual Neuroscience 9, 181197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaas, J.H., Krubitzer, L.A., Chino, Y.M., Langston, A.L., Polley, E.H., & Blair, N. (1990). Reorganisation of retinotopic cortical maps in adult mammals after lesions of the retina. Science 248, 229231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapadia, M.K., Gilbert, C.D., & Westheimer, G. (1994). A quantitative measure for short-term cortical plasticity in human vision. Journal of Neuroscience 14, 451457.Google Scholar
Kapadia, M.K., Ito, M., Gilbert, C.D., & Westheimer, G. (1995). Improvement in visual sensitivity by changes in local context: Parallel studies in human observers and in V1 of alert monkeys. Neuron 15, 843856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasamatsu, T., Polat, U., Pettet, M.W., & Norcia, A.M. (2001). Colinear facilitation promotes reliability of single-cell responses in cat striate cortex. Experimental Brain Research 138, 163172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malach, R., Amir, Y., Harel, M., & Grinvald, A. (1993). Relationship between intrinsic connections and functional architecture revealed by optical imaging and in vivo targeted biocytin injections in primate striate cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 90, 1046910473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuire, B.A., Hornung, J.P., Gilbert, C.D., & Wiesel, T.N. (1984). Patterns of synaptic input to layer 4 of cat striate cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 4, 30213033.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLean, J. & Palmer, L.A. (1998). Plasticity of neuronal response properties in adult cat striate cortex. Visual Neuroscience 15, 177196.Google Scholar
Merzenich, M.M., Kaas, J.H., Wall, J., Nelson, R.J., Sur, M., & Felleman, D. (1983). Topographic reorganization of somatosensory cortical areas 3b and 1 in adult monkeys following restricted deafferentation. Neuroscience 8, 3355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, J.R., Metha, A.B., Krauskopf, J., & Lennie, P. (1999). Rapid adaptation in visual cortex to the structure of images. Science 285, 14051408.Google Scholar
Nestares, O. & Heeger, D.J. (1997). Modeling the apparent frequency-specific suppression in simple cell responses. Vision Research 37, 15351543.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettet, M.W. & Gilbert, C.D. (1992). Dynamic changes in receptive-field size in cat primary visual cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 89, 83668370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polat, U., Mizobe, K., Pettet, M.W., Kasamatsu, T., & Norcia, A.M. (1998). Collinear stimuli regulate visual responses depending on cell's contrast threshold. Nature 391, 580584.Google Scholar
Polat, U. & Norcia, A.M. (1998). Elongated physiological summation pools in the human visual cortex. Vision Research 38, 37353741.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polat, U. & Sagi, D. (1993). Lateral interactions between spatial channels: Suppression and facilitation revealed by lateral masking experiments. Vision Research 33, 993999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polat, U. & Sagi, D. (1994). The architecture of perceptual spatial interactions. Vision Research 34, 7378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rockland, K.S. & Lund, J.S. (1982). Widespread periodic intrinsic connections in the tree shrew visual cortex. Science 215, 15321534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, K.E., Goebel, R., Lowel, S., & Singer, W. (1997). The perceptual grouping criterion of colinearity is reflected by anisotropies of connections in the primary visual cortex. European Journal of Neuroscience 9, 10831089.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, G.A., Ohzawa, I., & Freeman, R.D. (2000). Suppression outside the classical cortical receptive field. Visual Neuroscience 17, 369379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westheimer, G. (1998). Lines and Gabor functions compared as spatial visual stimuli. Vision Research 38, 487491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westheimer, G., Crist, R.E., Gorski, L., & Gilbert, C.D. (2001). Configuration specificity in bisection acuity. Vision Research 41, 11331138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar