Pattern vision articles within Nature Communications

Featured

• Article
  23 April 2024 | Open Access

  Brightness illusions drive a neuronal response in the primary visual cortex under top-down modulation

  The neural mechanisms underpinning visual illusions remains poorly understood. Here, the authors recorded the neural responses of mouse primary visual cortex to illusory grating and found delayed responses to illusory brightness, showing that optogenetic inhibition of higher visual areas reduced V1 response to illusions but not to real gratings.

  • Alireza Saeedi
  • , Kun Wang
  •  & Masataka Watanabe

• Article
  12 April 2024 | Open Access

  Stimulus encoding by specific inactivation of cortical neurons

  How neural ensembles encode information remains poorly understood. Here, the authors identify “offsembles”—neurons that are specifically inactivated by sensory stimuli—which, when combined with “onsemble” neurons that are turned on by the stimulus, provide enhanced encoding power to the cortex.

  • Jesús Pérez-Ortega
  • , Alejandro Akrouh
  •  & Rafael Yuste

• Article
  07 June 2023 | Open Access

  Brain-optimized deep neural network models of human visual areas learn non-hierarchical representations

  Whether or not deep neural networks require hierarchical representations to predict brain activity is not known. Here, the authors show that a multi-branch deep neural network can predict neural activity independently in visual areas in the absence of hierarchical representations.

  • Ghislain St-Yves
  • , Emily J. Allen
  •  & Thomas Naselaris

• Article
  29 December 2022 | Open Access

  Efficient neural codes naturally emerge through gradient descent learning

  In animals, sensory systems appear optimized for the statistics of the external world. Here the authors take an artificial psychophysics approach, analysing sensory responses in artificial neural networks, and show why these demonstrate the same phenomenon as natural sensory systems.

  • Ari S. Benjamin
  • , Ling-Qi Zhang
  •  & Konrad P. Kording

• Article
  24 August 2022 | Open Access

  A neural correlate of perceptual segmentation in macaque middle temporal cortical area

  Perceptual segmentation, grouping distinct parts of the input for further processing, is a hard problem for sensory systems. Here, the authors report a link between spiking activity in primate visual cortical area MT and subjective segmentation.

  • Andrew M. Clark
  •  & David C. Bradley

• Article
  06 June 2022 | Open Access

  Diversity of spatiotemporal coding reveals specialized visual processing streams in the mouse cortex

  The cerebral cortex contains different neural representations of the visual scene. Here, the authors show diverse and stereotyped tuning composing specialized representations in the dorsal and ventral areas of the mouse visual cortex, suggesting parallel processing channels and streams.

  • Xu Han
  • , Ben Vermaercke
  •  & Vincent Bonin

• Article
  28 July 2021 | Open Access

  Opposing effects of selectivity and invariance in peripheral vision

  Visual processing necessitates both extracting and discarding information. Here, the authors use a specialized set of stimuli and two complementary discrimination tasks to demonstrate the opposing perceptual implications of these two aspects of information processing.

  • Corey M. Ziemba
  •  & Eero P. Simoncelli

• Article
  03 April 2020 | Open Access

  Spatial contextual effects in primary visual cortex limit feature representation under crowding

  Visual crowding can strongly limit perceptual discriminability, yet its neural basis remains unclear. Here, the authors show that perceptual crowding is similar in monkeys and humans, and that feature encoding in neuronal populations in primary visual cortex is limited for displays inducing crowding.

  • Christopher A. Henry
  •  & Adam Kohn

• Article
  22 May 2019 | Open Access

  Form vision from melanopsin in humans

  The perception of spatial patterns (form vision) is thought to rely on rod and cone cells in the retina. Here, the authors show that a third kind of retinal cell, melanopsin-expressing ganglion cells, can also detect form in humans, under particular conditions.

  • Annette E. Allen
  • , Franck P. Martial
  •  & Robert J. Lucas

• Article
  20 July 2018 | Open Access

  Spatial frequency sensitivity in macaque midbrain

  In primates, the superior colliculus (SC) contributes to rapid visual exploration with saccades. Here the authors show that the superior colliculus preferentially represents low spatial frequencies, which are the most prevalent in natural scenes.

  • Chih-Yang Chen
  • , Lukas Sonnenberg
  •  & Ziad M. Hafed

• Article
  23 November 2016 | Open Access

  Functional implications of orientation maps in primary visual cortex

  Stimulus orientation in the primary visual cortex of primates and carnivores is mapped into a geometrical mosaic but the functional implications of these maps remain debated. Here the authors reveal an association between the structure of cortical orientation maps in cats, and the functions of local cortical circuits in processing patterns and contours.

  • Erin Koch
  • , Jianzhong Jin
  •  & Qasim Zaidi

• Article
  19 July 2016 | Open Access

  Direct detection of a single photon by humans

  The detection limit of human vision has remained unclear. Using a quantum light source capable of generating single-photon states of light, authors here report that humans can perceive a single photon incidence on the eye with a probability above chance.

  • Jonathan N. Tinsley
  • , Maxim I. Molodtsov
  •  & Alipasha Vaziri

• Article
  12 July 2016 | Open Access

  Dynamic polarization vision in mantis shrimps

  Mantis shrimps are known to display large pitch, yaw and torsional eye rotations. Here, the authors show that these eye movements allow mantis shrimp to orientate particular photoreceptors in order to better discriminate the polarization of light.

  • Ilse M. Daly
  • , Martin J. How
  •  & Nicholas W. Roberts