Influence of the Direction of Elemental Luminance Gradients on the Responses of V4 Cells to Textured Surfaces

The texture of an object provides important cues for its recognition; however, little is known about the neural representation of texture. To investigate the representation of texture in the visual cortex, we recorded single-cell activities in area V4 of macaque monkeys. To distinguish the sensitivity of the cells to texture parameters such as density and element size from that to spatial frequency, we used texture stimuli mimicking shaded granular surfaces. We varied the size and density of the texture elements and the direction of elemental luminance gradients (apparent shadings) as stimulus parameters. Most macaque V4 cells (151 of 170; 89%) exhibited sensitivity to the texture parameters. Interestingly, 21of these cells were tuned to single shading directions (unidirectional tuning). This unidirectional tuning cannot be explained by complex-cell-like tuning for spectral power of spatial frequency, because texture stimuli with a shading direction and its opposite have almost the same spectral power. Unidirectional tunings of these cells were invariant for the position of the texture elements. Thus, this tuning cannot be explained by simple-cell-like phase-dependent spatial frequency tuning or selectivity to a particular arrangement of the elements. Moreover, the unidirectional tuning had a bias toward vertical directions, consistent with an anisotropy in the perception of three-dimensional shape from shading. This novel spatial property suggests that V4 cells are involved in extracting texture features from objects, including their three-dimensionality.