Surround Suppression of V1 Neurons Mediates Orientation-based Representation of High-order Visual Features Electrophysiological Recordings and Surgery Subjects and Surgeries

Tanaka H, Ohzawa I. Surround suppression of V1 neurons mediates orientation-based representation of high-order visual features. Neurons with surround suppression have been implicated in processing high-order visual features such as contrast-or texture-defined boundaries and subjective contours. However , little is known regarding how these neurons encode high-order visual information in a systematic manner as a population. To address this issue, we have measured detailed spatial structures of classical center and suppressive surround regions of receptive fields of primary visual cortex (V1) neurons and examined how a population of such neurons allow encoding of various high-order features and shapes in visual scenes. Using a novel method to reconstruct structures, we found that the center and surround regions are often both elongated parallel to each other, reminiscent of ON and OFF subregions of simple cells without surround suppression. These structures allow V1 neu-rons to extract high-order contours of various orientations and spatial frequencies, with a variety of optimal values across neurons. The results show that a wide range of orientations and widths of the high-order features are systematically represented by the population of V1 neurons with surround suppression. Outside the classical receptive fields (CRFs), many cortical neurons have additional regions referred to as surround, where stimuli typically reduce responses of neurons (Allman et al. The interactions between the CRF (center) and surround are suggested to signal higher-order visual features such as contrast and texture borders (von der Heydt et al. 1984). However, we do not yet have a systematic understanding of how such higher-order visual features are represented by the population of primary visual cortex (V1) neurons via these center–surround effects. One reason for the lack of the systematic understanding is that, previously, we have not been able to measure spatial structures of the center and surround organization with sufficient detail and accuracy. Although several studies investigated spatial distribution of surround suppression (DeAngelis et al. 1994; Kapadia et al. 2000; Pack et al. 2003; Vinje and Gallant 2000; Walker et al. 1999), they were not able to describe the exact spatial forms of the center and surround. Without exact knowledge of the structure for a population of V1 neurons, it would be difficult to devise a testable hypothesis of encoding. How is encoding of high-order features related to spatial organizations of the center and surround? The model neuron in Fig. 1A prefers horizontal gratings in the CRF (solid ellipses) and has suppressive …

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