Abstract
Previous studies have shown that the perception of apparent motion leads to increased activation in the region of the primary visual cortex (V1) corresponding to the apparent motion path, suggesting that neural representation is reconstructed in the apparent motion path even at the earliest stages of cortical processing (Muckli et al., 2005). However, the question of whether visual properties of an object engaged in apparent motion are maintained in this representation remains unanswered. In order to examine this question, we used fMRI with pattern classification methods. During each trial, a bistable quartet with either left or right oriented gratings was shown. Subjects were biased to perceive either horizontal or vertical apparent motion. We extracted the BOLD signal in V1 corresponding to the middle location between the two gratings, containing the apparent motion path when the perceived motion was vertical, but not when it was horizontal. Our results show higher decoding accuracy of grating orientation when the regions between two gratings correspond to apparent motion path compared to when it does not. This suggests that neural representation reconstructed in the apparent motion path in early retinotopic cortex contains stimulus-specific information.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012