Enhanced perception of illusory contours in the lower versus upper visual hemifields

Science

Volumn 271, Issue 5249, 1996, Pages 651-653

  Rubin, Nava ^a   Nakayama, Ken ^a   Shapley, Robert ^b  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ILLUSION; NEUROANATOMY; PERCEPTION; PHOTORECEPTOR; PRIORITY JOURNAL; VISUAL CORTEX; VISUAL FIELD;

EID: 0030034373     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.271.5249.651     Document Type: Article

References (46)

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13. In extrastnate cortical areas (V2 and higher) of humans and other primates, the upper and lower visual quadrants are represented, respectively, on the lower and upper parts of the cortical sheet within each hemisphere, with visual area V1 physically separating them [D. J. Felleman and D C. van Essen, Cereb. Cortex 1, 1 (1991); J. C. Horton and W. F. Hoyt. Arch. Ophthalmol. 109, 816 (1991)]. In human neurological patients, this can lead to pronounced quadrantic field defects - a sharp change in visual capacity across the horizontal meridian [G. Holmes, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 132, 348 (1945), J. C. Horton and W F Hoyt, Brain 114, 1703 (1991)].
14. In extrastnate cortical areas (V2 and higher) of humans and other primates, the upper and lower visual quadrants are represented, respectively, on the lower and upper parts of the cortical sheet within each hemisphere, with visual area V1 physically separating them [D. J. Felleman and D C. van Essen, Cereb. Cortex 1, 1 (1991); J. C. Horton and W. F. Hoyt. Arch. Ophthalmol. 109, 816 (1991)]. In human neurological patients, this can lead to pronounced quadrantic field defects - a sharp change in visual capacity across the horizontal meridian [G. Holmes, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 132, 348 (1945), J. C. Horton and W F Hoyt, Brain 114, 1703 (1991)].
15. In extrastnate cortical areas (V2 and higher) of humans and other primates, the upper and lower visual quadrants are represented, respectively, on the lower and upper parts of the cortical sheet within each hemisphere, with visual area V1 physically separating them [D. J. Felleman and D C. van Essen, Cereb. Cortex 1, 1 (1991); J. C. Horton and W. F. Hoyt. Arch. Ophthalmol. 109, 816 (1991)]. In human neurological patients, this can lead to pronounced quadrantic field defects - a sharp change in visual capacity across the horizontal meridian [G. Holmes, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 132, 348 (1945), J. C. Horton and W F Hoyt, Brain 114, 1703 (1991)].
16. In extrastnate cortical areas (V2 and higher) of humans and other primates, the upper and lower visual quadrants are represented, respectively, on the lower and upper parts of the cortical sheet within each hemisphere, with visual area V1 physically separating them [D. J. Felleman and D C. van Essen, Cereb. Cortex 1, 1 (1991); J. C. Horton and W. F. Hoyt. Arch. Ophthalmol. 109, 816 (1991)]. In human neurological patients, this can lead to pronounced quadrantic field defects - a sharp change in visual capacity across the horizontal meridian [G. Holmes, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B. 132, 348 (1945), J. C. Horton and W F Hoyt, Brain 114, 1703 (1991)].
17. The stereoscopic stimulus was presented with the use of a prism stereo viewer (11 subjects) or as a red/green anaglyph (15 subjects) [B. Julesz, Foundations of Cyclopean Vision (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971)].
18. The four remaining subjects could not discern a perceptual difference between the two fixation conditions.
19. In that respect, the stimulus of Fig. 2 is different from most other stereograms involving an illusory occluder [for example, S. Blomfield, Nature New Biol. 245, 256 (1973)], because an (illusory) edge in any orientation other than the horizontal would result in a disparity in the left- and right eye images for which the only ecologically valid interpretation is one of there being an illusory occluder
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21. Subjects CT and CH were naive about the purpose of the experiment. All subjects received extensive practice in performing the shape-discrimination task with the stimulus centered around the fixation point before the collection of the data presented
22. 2) on a dark background. The subject was restrained with a chin and forehead rest, and the experiment room was dark.
23. A sigmoid curve ({1 + tanh[b(x - a)]}/2) was fit to the data of each psychometric function, with the slope (b) and bias (a) as free parameters, the thresholds were computed from the fitted curves
24. The differences in thresholds between the upper and lower visual hemifields were statistically significant in the IC condition (Fig. 3A) for all subjects. The differences in the two control conditions were not significant for any of the subjects. The error bars of the slopes (b) were estimated from the variance-covariance matrix [R Fletcher, Practical Methods of Optimization (Wiley, New York, 1980)].
25. For the two presentation conditions (upper and lower hemifields), the stimuli were mirror-reflected about a horizontal line passing through the center, such that in both cases the inducers' arcs were facing the fixation point.
26. N Rubin, K. Nakayama, R. Shapley, data not shown.
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33. This raises the possibility that the differential specialization in scene segmentation reported here may in turn bo related to functional specialization of higher visual areas in the ventral and dorsal streams [L. G. Ungerleider and M. Mishkin, in Analysis of Visual Behavior, D. J. Ingle, M A Goodale, R. J W. Mansfield, Eds (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982); M. A. Goodale and A D. Milner, Trends Neurosci. 15, 20 (1992)], because the lower and upper parts of early visual areas project more to ventral and dorsal areas outside the occipital lobe, respectively [J H. R. Maunsell and W. T. Newsome, Annu Rev. Neurosci 10, 363 (1987); (19)].
34. This raises the possibility that the differential specialization in scene segmentation reported here may in turn bo related to functional specialization of higher visual areas in the ventral and dorsal streams [L. G. Ungerleider and M. Mishkin, in Analysis of Visual Behavior, D. J. Ingle, M A Goodale, R. J W. Mansfield, Eds (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982); M. A. Goodale and A D. Milner, Trends Neurosci. 15, 20 (1992)], because the lower and upper parts of early visual areas project more to ventral and dorsal areas outside the occipital lobe, respectively [J H. R. Maunsell and W. T. Newsome, Annu Rev. Neurosci 10, 363 (1987); (19)].
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46. We thank P. Cavanagh, R. Frost, J. Hirsch, K. Miller, S. Suzuki, and S Ullman for helpful discussions and for reviewing the manuscript. Supported by the McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Neuroscience (N.R), Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant F4 96209510036 (K.N.), and National Institutes of Health grant EY-01472 (R S.).