Nieder A, Wagner H
Lehrstuhl für Zoologie/Tierphysiologie, Institut für Biologie II, RWTH Aachen, Germany.
Nat Neurosci. 1999 Jul;2(7):660-3. doi: 10.1038/10217.
Robust form perception and underlying neuronal mechanisms require generalized representation of object boundaries, independent of how they are defined. One visual ability essential for form perception is reconstruction of contours absent from the retinal image. Here we show that barn owls perceive subjective contours defined by grating gaps and phase-shifted abutting gratings. Moreover, single-neuron recordings from visual forebrain (visual Wulst) of awake, behaving birds revealed a high proportion of neurons signaling such subjective contours, independent of local stimulus attributes. These data suggest that the visual Wulst is important in contour-based form perception and exhibits a functional complexity analogous to mammalian extrastriate cortex.
稳健的形状感知和潜在的神经元机制需要物体边界的广义表示，而与它们的定义方式无关。形状感知所必需的一种视觉能力是重建视网膜图像中缺失的轮廓。在这里，我们表明仓鸮能够感知由光栅间隙和相移邻接光栅定义的主观轮廓。此外，对清醒、行为中的鸟类视觉前脑（视叶）进行的单神经元记录显示，有很大比例的神经元发出此类主观轮廓的信号，而与局部刺激属性无关。这些数据表明，视叶在基于轮廓的形状感知中很重要，并且表现出与哺乳动物纹外皮层类似的功能复杂性。
