Mechanisms of visual object recognition studied in monkeys.

Cells in area TE of the inferotemporal cortex of the monkey brain selectively respond to various moderately complex object-features, and those responding to similar features cluster in a columnar region elongated vertical to the cortical surface. Although cells within a column respond to similar features, their selectivity is not identical. The data of optical imaging in TE have suggested that the borders between neighboring columns are not discrete but columns representing related features overlap one another. We have also found, by training adult monkeys for discrimination of a specific set of shapes, that such a long-term training increases the proportion of TE cells responding to the shapes used in the training even in the adult. The data suggested that TE plays important roles in discrimination of complex shapes and in visual expert learning of discriminating a certain class of objects in the adult.

[1]  Minami Ito,et al.  Size and position invariance of neuronal responses in monkey inferotemporal cortex. , 1995, Journal of neurophysiology.

[2]  R. Desimone,et al.  Visual properties of neurons in a polysensory area in superior temporal sulcus of the macaque. , 1981, Journal of neurophysiology.

[3]  D. V. van Essen,et al.  Selectivity for polar, hyperbolic, and Cartesian gratings in macaque visual cortex. , 1993, Science.

[4]  Keiji Tanaka,et al.  Effects of shape-discrimination training on the selectivity of inferotemporal cells in adult monkeys. , 1998, Journal of neurophysiology.

[5]  Keiji Tanaka,et al.  Functional architecture in monkey inferotemporal cortex revealed by in vivo optical imaging , 1998, Neuroscience Research.

[6]  Keiji Tanaka,et al.  Neuronal selectivities to complex object features in the ventral visual pathway of the macaque cerebral cortex. , 1994, Journal of neurophysiology.

[7]  Y. Miyashita,et al.  Neural organization for the long-term memory of paired associates , 1991, Nature.

[8]  R. Desimone,et al.  Stimulus-selective properties of inferior temporal neurons in the macaque , 1984, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[9]  R. Desimone,et al.  Shape recognition and inferior temporal neurons. , 1983, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[10]  K. Tanaka,et al.  Divergent Projections from the Anterior Inferotemporal Area TE to the Perirhinal and Entorhinal Cortices in the Macaque Monkey , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[11]  C. Gross,et al.  How inferior temporal cortex became a visual area. , 1994, Cerebral cortex.

[12]  Keiji Tanaka,et al.  Optical Imaging of Functional Organization in the Monkey Inferotemporal Cortex , 1996, Science.

[13]  S. Ullman.  High-Level Vision: Object Recognition and Visual Cognition , 1996 .

[14]  Minami Ito,et al.  Columns for visual features of objects in monkey inferotemporal cortex , 1992, Nature.

[15]  K Cheng,et al.  Organization of Corticostriatal and Corticoamygdalar Projections Arising from the Anterior Inferotemporal Area TE of the Macaque Monkey: A Phaseolus vulgaris Leucoagglutinin Study , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[16]  D. C. Essen,et al.  Neural responses to polar, hyperbolic, and Cartesian gratings in area V4 of the macaque monkey. , 1996, Journal of neurophysiology.

[17]  G. Orban,et al.  Cue-invariant shape selectivity of macaque inferior temporal neurons. , 1993, Science.

[18]  H. Spitzer,et al.  Temporal encoding of two-dimensional patterns by single units in primate inferior temporal cortex. I. Response characteristics. , 1987, Journal of neurophysiology.

[19]  M. Ito,et al.  Processing of contrast polarity of visual images in inferotemporal cortex of the macaque monkey. , 1994, Cerebral cortex.

[20]  R. Desimone,et al.  Inferior temporal mechanisms for invariant object recognition. , 1994, Cerebral cortex.

[21]  Y. Miyashita,et al.  Neuronal tuning to learned complex forms in vision. , 1994, Neuroreport.

[22]  N. Logothetis,et al.  Shape representation in the inferior temporal cortex of monkeys , 1995, Current Biology.

[23]  Keiji Tanaka,et al.  Coding visual images of objects in the inferotemporal cortex of the macaque monkey. , 1991, Journal of neurophysiology.