Wilke Melanie, Logothetis Nikos K, Leopold David A
Max Planck Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Spemannstrasse 38, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Neuron. 2003 Sep 11;39(6):1043-52. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2003.08.003.
A pattern of light striking the retina of an alert observer is normally readily perceived. While a handful of conditions exist in which even salient visual stimuli can be rendered invisible, the mechanisms underlying such suppression remain poorly understood. Here, we describe experiments using a novel stimulation sequence that gives rise to the sudden and reliable subjective disappearance of a wide range of visual patterns. We found that a parafoveal target immediately vanished from perception following the abrupt onset of a surrounding texture. The probability of disappearance was influenced by the ocular configuration of the target and surround, as well as their spatial separation. In addition, suppression was critically dependent upon several hundred milliseconds of stimulus-specific adaptation. These findings demonstrate that the all-or-none disappearance of a salient visual target, which is reminiscent of a high-level selection process, is inextricably linked to topographic stimulus representations, presumably in the early visual cortex.
正常情况下，照射到警觉观察者视网膜上的光模式很容易被感知。虽然存在少数几种情况，即使是显著的视觉刺激也可能变得不可见，但这种抑制背后的机制仍知之甚少。在这里，我们描述了使用一种新颖的刺激序列进行的实验，该序列会导致各种视觉模式突然且可靠地主观消失。我们发现，在周围纹理突然出现后，中央凹旁的目标会立即从感知中消失。消失的概率受目标和周围环境的眼部配置及其空间分离的影响。此外，抑制严重依赖于几百毫秒的刺激特异性适应。这些发现表明，显著视觉目标的全或无消失，这让人联想到一个高级选择过程，与地形刺激表征有着千丝万缕的联系，大概是在早期视觉皮层中。
