Department of Cortical Structure and Function, The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Meibergdreef 47, 1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Cereb Cortex. 2017 Dec 1;27(12):5772-5783. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhx254.
We detect objects more readily if they differ from their surroundings in motion, color, or texture. This increased saliency is thought to be related to increased responses in the visual cortex. The superior colliculus is another brain area involved in vision and especially in directing gaze and attention. In this study, we show that differences in texture orientation also increase responses in the superficial layers of the superior colliculus that receive retinal and cortical input. We found that gratings evoke more neural response when surrounded by orthogonal gratings than when surrounded by parallel gratings, particularly in the awake mouse. This pop-out is not originating from the visual cortex, and silencing visual cortex increased the relative difference in response. A model shows that this can result from retinotopically matched excitation from visual cortex to the superior colliculus. We suggest that the perceptual saliency of a stimulus differing from its surround in a low-level feature like grating orientation could depend on visual processing in the superior colliculus.
如果物体在运动、颜色或纹理上与周围环境不同，我们更容易检测到它们。这种增加的显著性被认为与视觉皮层中反应的增加有关。上丘是另一个参与视觉的大脑区域，特别是在引导注视和注意力方面。在这项研究中，我们表明纹理方向的差异也会增加接收视网膜和皮层输入的上丘浅层的反应。我们发现，当周围是正交光栅时，光栅会引起更多的神经反应，而当周围是平行光栅时，这种突出性不是来自视觉皮层，而且视觉皮层的沉默增加了反应的相对差异。模型表明，这可能是由于来自视觉皮层的与感受野匹配的兴奋作用到上丘。我们认为，与周围环境在低级特征（如光栅方向）上不同的刺激的感知显著性可能取决于上丘的视觉处理。
