Extrastriate cortex articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The visual cortex adapts innate behaviors through its corticofugal projections to the brainstem. Here, authors show that this pathway sends unique brainstem neurons distinct behaviorally relevant signals, whose strength can plastically change to promote behavioral adaptation.

    • Jiashu Liu
    • , Yingtian He
    •  & Bao-hua Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How salient objects in our environment grab our attention has been a matter of debate for decades. Here, the authors demonstrate that salient objects automatically capture attention, but cognitive effort can affect their potency.

    • Jacob A. Westerberg
    • , Jeffrey D. Schall
    •  & Alexander Maier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studying visual processing during natural eye movements in untrained animals is challenging. Here, the authors provide a method for accurately measuring the retinal input to study visual processing and neural selectivity during natural oculomotor behavior in non-human primates.

    • Jacob L. Yates
    • , Shanna H. Coop
    •  & Jude F. Mitchell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Not much is known about how intrinsic timescales, which characterize the dynamics of endogenous fluctuations in neural activity, change during cognitive tasks. Here, the authors show that intrinsic timescales of neural activity in the primate visual cortex change during spatial attention. Experimental data were best explained by a network model in which timescales arise from spatially arranged connectivity.

    • Roxana Zeraati
    • , Yan-Liang Shi
    •  & Tatiana A. Engel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the visual system adapts to stimuli along multiple feature axes during natural viewing is poorly understood. Here, the authors show significant enhancement of stimulus coding of image features in visual cortex after rapid exposure to an orthogonal feature.

    • Sunny Nigam
    • , Russell Milton
    •  & Valentin Dragoi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cortical activity is modulated by an intricate network of feedforward and feedback connectivity. Here the authors demonstrate distinct organizational rules govern feedback projections from lateral medial area to V1 versus projections from vibrissal M1 to vibrissal S1.

    • Shan Shen
    • , Xiaolong Jiang
    •  & Andreas S. Tolias

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anterior face patches in the macaque have been assumed to represent face identity in a holistic manner. Here the authors show that the neural encoding of face identity in the anterior medial and anterior fundus face patches are instead driven principally by local features.

    • Elena N. Waidmann
    • , Kenji W. Koyano
    •  & David A. Leopold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors analyze the Allen Institute Brain Observatory Ca2+ imaging data, focusing on mouse visual cortex during locomotive and quiescent states. They find that locomotion increases neural coding fidelity, regardless of whether population activity increases or decreases in response to the population’s preferred stimuli.

    • Amelia J. Christensen
    •  & Jonathan W. Pillow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A late enhancement of the perisaccadic neural response may exist in extrastriate areas. Here the authors show this preserves pre-saccadic information until the post-saccadic information is received, maintaining an integrated representation of the visual scene across saccadic eye movements.

    • Amir Akbarian
    • , Kelsey Clark
    •  & Neda Nategh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spontaneous traveling cortical waves shape neural responses. Using a large-scale computational model, the authors show that transmission delays shape locally asynchronous spiking dynamics into traveling waves without inducing correlations and boost responses to external input, as observed in vivo.

    • Zachary W. Davis
    • , Gabriel B. Benigno
    •  & Lyle Muller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Distinct brain regions are claimed to respond selectively to faces, places and bodies, but what counts as a face, place or body is less well defined. Here we build computational models that accurately predict the response of these regions to novel images, enabling stronger tests and confirmation of their selectivity.

    • N. Apurva Ratan Murty
    • , Pouya Bashivan
    •  & Nancy Kanwisher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Feedback modulates visual neurons, thought to help achieve flexible task performance. Here, the authors show decision-related feedback is not only relayed to task-relevant neurons, suggesting a broader mechanism and supporting a previously hypothesized link to feature-based attention.

    • Katrina R. Quinn
    • , Lenka Seillier
    •  & Hendrikje Nienborg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The representation of space in mouse visual cortex was considered to be relatively uniform. The authors show that mice have improved visual resolution in a cortical region representing a location in space directly in front and slightly above them, showing that the representation of space in mouse visual cortex is non-uniform.

    • Enny H. van Beest
    • , Sreedeep Mukherjee
    •  & Matthew W. Self

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors show that the brain represents small and large numerosity ranges in a continuous topographic map, in line with the idea that differences in map properties underlie differences in perception.

    • Yuxuan Cai
    • , Shir Hofstetter
    •  & Serge O. Dumoulin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans process faces using face-selective regions in the ventral and lateral streams which perform different tasks. Here, the authors show via functional and diffusion MRI that the spatial computations in face-selective regions vary across streams, constrained by connections from early visual areas.

    • Dawn Finzi
    • , Jesse Gomez
    •  & Kalanit Grill-Spector

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How intensely an individual focuses attention is a fundamental component of attention in improving behavior performance. Here, the authors isolated neuronal activity dynamics in visual cortex V4 that represents the intensive aspect of attention independent of selective attention and experimental covariates- reward expectation, motor response preparation.

    • Supriya Ghosh
    •  & John H. R. Maunsell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The human brain is specialised for face processing, yet sometimes objects are perceived as illusory faces. Here, the authors show that illusory faces are initially represented similarly to real faces, but the representation quickly transforms into one equivalent to ordinary objects.

    • Susan G. Wardle
    • , Jessica Taubert
    •  & Chris I. Baker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visual features are streamed into higher visual areas (HVAs), but how representations in HVAs are built, based on retinal output channels, is unknown. Here, the authors show that specific connectivity of cortical neurons routes retina-originated direction-selective signaling into distinct HVAs.

    • Rune Rasmussen
    • , Akihiro Matsumoto
    •  & Keisuke Yonehara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Practice can improve the perception of stimuli used to achieve a task (perceptual learning). Here, the authors show in monkeys that perceptual learning can be produced even for irrelevant stimuli if the stimuli are paired with stimulation of a dopaminergic centre, the ventral tegmental area (VTA).

    • John T. Arsenault
    •  & Wim Vanduffel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perceptual learning, the improvement in perceptual abilities with training, is thought to involve changes in neuronal 'tuning'. Here, the authors show that perceptual learning works by making neurons increasingly sensitive to task-relevant differences in stimuli, and by improving population coding mechanisms.

    • Mehdi Sanayei
    • , Xing Chen
    •  & Alexander Thiele

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inferotemporal cortex (IT) neurons respond to specific objects but the precise neural mechanisms for clutter-invariant representation is not known. Here the authors show that face and body patch IT neurons respond to multiple objects with winner-take-all, contralateral-take-all or weighted averaging depending on the stimulus properties.

    • Pinglei Bao
    •  & Doris Y. Tsao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Population receptive fields (pRFs) in the visual system are key information-processors, but how they develop is unknown. Here, authors use fMRI and pRF modeling in children and adults to show that in the ventral stream only pRFs in face- and word-selective regions continue to develop, mirroring changes in viewing behavior.

    • Jesse Gomez
    • , Vaidehi Natu
    •  & Kalanit Grill-Spector

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Blurred edges of objects can aid in depth perception and segmentation, yet how it is combined with shape information in the visual pathway is unknown. Here the authors report that neurons in higher visual area V4 represent both object shape and boundary blur, controlling for stimulus size, intensity and curvature.

    • Timothy D. Oleskiw
    • , Amy Nowack
    •  & Anitha Pasupathy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Though people are easily able to recall items in a category without mentioning a wrong exemplar, the mechanism underlying this ability is unknown. Here, authors use intracranial recordings to show that this ability is likely due to a selective increase in baseline neuronal activity in category-specific regions.

    • Yitzhak Norman
    • , Erin M. Yeagle
    •  & Rafael Malach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Macaque higher visual areas MST and VIP encode heading direction based on self-motion stimuli. Here the authors show that, while making saccades, the heading direction decoded from the neural responses is compressed toward straight-ahead, and independently demonstrate a perceptual illusion in humans based on this perisaccadic decoding error.

    • Frank Bremmer
    • , Jan Churan
    •  & Markus Lappe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Choice-related signals in neuronal activity may reflect bottom-up sensory processes, top-down decision-related influences, or a combination of the two. Here the authors report that choice-related activity in VIP neurons is not predictable from their stimulus tuning, and that dominant choice signals can bias the standard metric of choice preference (choice probability).

    • Adam Zaidel
    • , Gregory C. DeAngelis
    •  & Dora E. Angelaki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Focal cortical seizures result from local and widespread propagation of excitatory activity. Here the authors employ widefield calcium imaging in mouse visual areas to demonstrate that these seizures start as local synchronous activation and then propagate along the connectivity that underlies normal sensory processing.

    • L. Federico Rossi
    • , Robert C. Wykes
    •  & Matteo Carandini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    V2 neurons exhibit complex and diverse selectivity for visual features. Here the authors use a statistical analytical framework to model V2 responses to natural stimuli and find three organizing principles, chief among them is the cross-orientation suppression that increases response selectivity.

    • Ryan J. Rowekamp
    •  & Tatyana O. Sharpee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Frontal eye field (FEF) is a visual prefrontal area involved in top-down attention. Here the authors report that FEF neurons projecting to V4/MT are persistently active during spatial working memory, and V4/MT neurons show changes in receptive field and gain at the location held in working memory.

    • Yaser Merrikhi
    • , Kelsey Clark
    •  & Behrad Noudoost

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adult visual cortex is organized into regions that respond to categories such as faces and scenes, but it is unclear if this depends on experience. Here, authors measured brain activity in 4–6 month old infants looking at faces and scenes and find that their visual cortex is organized similarly to adults.

    • Ben Deen
    • , Hilary Richardson
    •  & Rebecca Saxe

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