September 2011
Volume 11, Issue 11
Free
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   September 2011
Spatial saturation in human visual cortex
Author Affiliations
  • Kendrick Kay
    Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
  • Jonathan Winawer
    Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
  • Aviv Mezer
    Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
  • Brian Wandell
    Department of Psychology, Stanford University, USA
Journal of Vision September 2011, Vol.11, 1167. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/11.11.1167
  • Views
  • Share
  • Tools
    • Alerts
      ×
      This feature is available to authenticated users only.
      Sign In or Create an Account ×
    • Get Citation

      Kendrick Kay, Jonathan Winawer, Aviv Mezer, Brian Wandell; Spatial saturation in human visual cortex. Journal of Vision 2011;11(11):1167. https://doi.org/10.1167/11.11.1167.

      Download citation file:


      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

      ×
  • Supplements
Abstract

Integrating image features across space is fundamental to visual function. Previous fMRI studies investigating retinotopy and related spatial properties have assumed implicitly or explicitly that responses to spatial contrast patterns sum linearly over the visual field. To test this assumption, we measured BOLD activity in human visual cortex while subjects viewed brief presentations of contrast patterns seen through horizontal and vertical apertures. A variety of different apertures were presented in random order in an event-related design. Throughout visual cortex the response to a large aperture was less than the sum of the responses to two parts of the aperture shown in separate trials. This sub-additive effect was larger in extrastriate areas than in V1. We modeled the sub-additivity by incorporating a compressive nonlinearity into a basic linear model of population receptive fields (Dumoulin and Wandell, 2008; Kay et al., 2008). Using cross-validation to obtain unbiased measures of model accuracy, we found that the nonlinear model systematically outperforms the linear model, explaining up to 98% of the variance in the amplitudes of the responses to the various apertures. Moreover, the nonlinearity of the model was more pronounced in extrastriate areas, consistent with the larger degree of sub-additivity in these areas. The nonlinear effect we have described can be viewed as spatial saturation in the sense that stimulating only a portion of a population receptive field is sufficient to saturate the response. Spatial saturation reduces sensitivity to changes in the position of a viewed object, and may be a fundamental computation that underlies the emergence of position tolerance in extrastriate areas.

NIH grant EY019244, NEI grant RO1-EY03164. 
×
×

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

Sign in or purchase a subscription to access this content. ×

You must be signed into an individual account to use this feature.

×