A quantitative measure for short-term cortical plasticity in human vision

The human visual system is normally very good at determining the relative positions of objects in space, but under certain conditions contextual influences can cause significant errors in this process. We studied spatial localization around an artificial scotoma, a small mask that occludes part of the visual field while a dynamic pattern is shown over a surrounding region, and found that the ability to determine the position of short line segments was strongly biased toward the interior of the scotoma. We attribute this “shift” or misassignment of position to receptive field (RF) expansions within the artificial scotoma as seen in recent physiological studies. Furthermore, our findings show that this shift begins within 1 sec of stimulus presentation, suggesting that RFs are constantly altered by their local context and that these dynamics are a part of normal vision.

[1]  D. Hubel,et al.  Uniformity of monkey striate cortex: A parallel relationship between field size, scatter, and magnification factor , 1974, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[2]  J. Nelson,et al.  Orientation-selective inhibition from beyond the classic visual receptive field , 1978, Brain Research.

[3]  S. McKee,et al.  Improvement in vernier acuity with practice , 1978, Perception & psychophysics.

[4]  Gerald Westhhmer,et al.  Simultaneous orientation contrast for lines in the human fovea , 1990, Vision Research.

[5]  J. Lund,et al.  Widespread periodic intrinsic connections in the tree shrew visual cortex. , 1982, Science.

[6]  K. Tanaka,et al.  Analysis of local and wide-field movements in the superior temporal visual areas of the macaque monkey , 1986, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[7]  C. Gilbert.  Horizontal integration and cortical dynamics , 1992, Neuron.

[8]  M. Merzenich,et al.  Functional reorganization of primary somatosensory cortex in adult owl monkeys after behaviorally controlled tactile stimulation. , 1990, Journal of neurophysiology.

[9]  Lothar Spillmann,et al.  Dynamic noise backgrounds facilitate target fading , 1992, Vision Research.

[10]  S P McKee,et al.  Interference with line-orientation sensitivity. , 1976, Journal of the Optical Society of America.

[11]  G. Westheimer.  Spatial interaction in the domain of disparity signals in human stereoscopic vision. , 1986, The Journal of physiology.

[12]  M. Merzenich,et al.  Plasticity in the frequency representation of primary auditory cortex following discrimination training in adult owl monkeys , 1993, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[13]  R. L. Gregory,et al.  Perceptual filling in of artificially induced scotomas in human vision , 1991, Nature.

[14]  G Westheimer,et al.  Simultaneous orientation contrast for lines in the human fovea. , 1990, Vision research.

[15]  T. Wiesel,et al.  Clustered intrinsic connections in cat visual cortex , 1983, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[16]  G. Orban,et al.  Influence of a moving textured background on direction selectivity of cat striate neurons. , 1987, Journal of neurophysiology.

[17]  J. Kaas,et al.  Reorganization of retinotopic cortical maps in adult mammals after lesions of the retina. , 1990, Science.

[18]  M. Pettet,et al.  Dynamic changes in receptive-field size in cat primary visual cortex. , 1992, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[19]  C. A. Burbeck,et al.  Scaled position integration areas: accounting for Weber’s law for separation , 1993 .

[20]  T Poggio,et al.  Fast perceptual learning in visual hyperacuity. , 1991, Science.

[21]  J. Lund,et al.  Intrinsic laminar lattice connections in primate visual cortex , 1983, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[22]  D. Whitteridge,et al.  Form, function and intracortical projections of spiny neurones in the striate visual cortex of the cat. , 1984, The Journal of physiology.

[23]  R. von der Heydt,et al.  Mechanisms of contour perception in monkey visual cortex. I. Lines of pattern discontinuity , 1989, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.