Vogels R, Orban G A
Laboratorium voor Neuro- en Psychofysiologie, Faculteit der Geneeskunde, KULeuven, Belgium.
Prog Brain Res. 1996;112:195-211. doi: 10.1016/s0079-6123(08)63330-0.
Primates are able to recognize a particular object despite major differences in the retinal images of the object. Inferior temporal cortex is suggested to be involved in this invariant object recognition. Neurons of this cortex show shape selectivity and it has been shown that this shape selectivity is relatively invariant for changes in the position and size of the shape. We show that macaque inferior temporal cortical neurons may respond to shapes that are defined by relative motion or by texture differences. The degree of shape selectivity can vary for the different visual cues, but overall shape preference is invariant for shapes defined either by luminance, by relative motion or by texture. Also, we found that shape selective inferior temporal neurons respond to partial occluded shapes and that their shape selectivity is similar with and without the partial occlusion. These results suggest that inferior temporal neurons, as a population, can code for an abstract, stimulus invariant shape or object part.
灵长类动物能够识别特定物体，尽管该物体的视网膜图像存在重大差异。颞下回皮质被认为与这种不变物体识别有关。该皮质的神经元表现出形状选择性，并且已经表明这种形状选择性对于形状位置和大小的变化相对不变。我们表明，猕猴颞下回皮质神经元可能对由相对运动或纹理差异定义的形状做出反应。不同视觉线索的形状选择性程度可能不同，但总体形状偏好对于由亮度、相对运动或纹理定义的形状是不变的。此外，我们发现形状选择性颞下神经元对部分遮挡的形状有反应，并且它们的形状选择性在有和没有部分遮挡的情况下相似。这些结果表明，作为一个群体，颞下神经元可以编码抽象的、刺激不变的形状或物体部分。
