Spatial non-homogeneity of the antagonistic surround in motion perception.

At high contrast, duration thresholds for motion direction discrimination deteriorate with increasing stimulus size. This counterintuitive result has been explained by the center-surround antagonism present in the neurons of visual area MT. Conversely, at very low contrast, direction discrimination...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Serrano Pedraza, Ignacio, Hogg, Ellen L, Read, Jenny C A
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/44953
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44953
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:159.9.07
159.93
535
Motion perception
Center–surround antagonism
Surround suppression
Spatial summation
MT neurons
Psicología experimental
Percepción
Óptica oftálmica
6106 Psicología Experimental
6106.09 Procesos de Percepción
Descripción
Sumario:At high contrast, duration thresholds for motion direction discrimination deteriorate with increasing stimulus size. This counterintuitive result has been explained by the center-surround antagonism present in the neurons of visual area MT. Conversely, at very low contrast, direction discrimination improves with increasing size, a result that has been explained by spatial summation. In this investigation, we study the effects of stimulus shape and contrast on center-surround antagonism. Using adaptive Bayesian staircases, we measured duration thresholds of 5 subjects for vertically oriented Gabor patches of 1 cycle/deg with two types of oval Gaussian windows, one vertically elongated (Sx = 0.35, Sy = 2.5 deg) and other horizontally elongated (Sx = 2.5, Sy = 0.35 deg) moving rightward or leftward at a speed of 2 deg/s. We found that at high contrast (92%) duration thresholds were lower for vertically than horizontally elongated windows. However, at low contrast (2.8%), we found that duration thresholds were lower for horizontally than vertically elongated windows. These asymmetric results mirror the spatial non-homogeneity of the antagonistic surround found in MT neurons and suggest that the underlying center-surround antagonism is stronger along the direction of motion.