Surround suppression maps in the cat primary visual cortex

Abstract

In the primary visual cortex and higher-order areas, it is well known that the stimulation of areas surrounding the classical receptive field of a neuron can inhibit its responses. In the primate area middle temporal (MT), this surround suppression was shown to be spatially organized into high and low suppression modules. However, such an organization has not been demonstrated yet in the primary visual cortex. Here, we used optical imaging of intrinsic signals to spatially evaluate surround suppression in the cat visual cortex. The magnitude of the response was measured in areas 17 and 18 for stimuli with different diameters, presented at different eccentricities. Delimited regions of the cortex were revealed by circumscribed stimulations of the visual field (“cortical response field”). Increasing the stimulus diameter increased the spread of cortical activation. In the cortical response field, the optimal stimulation diameter and the level of suppression were evaluated. Most pixels (≥3/4) exhibited surround suppression profiles. The optimal diameter, corresponding to a population of receptive fields, was smaller in area 17 (22°) than in area 18 (36°) in accordance with electrophysiological data. No difference in the suppression strength was observed between both areas (A17: 25%, A18: 21%). Further analysis of our data revealed the presence of surround modulation maps, organized in low and high suppression domains. We also developed a statistical method to confirm the existence of this cortical map and its neuronal origin. The organization for center/surround suppression observed here at the level of the primary visual cortex is similar to those found in higher order areas in primates (e.g., area MT) and could represent a strategy to optimize figure ground discrimination.

Early suppression effect in human primary visual cortex during Kanizsa illusion processing: A magnetoencephalographic evidence

“…Thus we corroborate and extend to adults the EEG findings of Stroganova et al (2012), who discovered the early inverted IC effect in children. This finding generally stays in accord with studies involving single-unit recordings in animals (Sillito & Jones, 1996; Jones et al, 2001; Ramsden et al, 2001; Ishikawa et al, 2010; Hashemi-Nezhad & Lyon, 2012; Henry et al, 2013; Vanni & Casanova, 2013), optical imaging in animals (Kinoshita et al, 2009) and fMRI studies of Kanizsa illusion perception in humans (Mendola et al, 1999), as well as studies of Gestalt perception in humans (Murray et al, 2002 b ; Fang et al, 2008; de-Wit et al, 2012).…”

“…The gaps in collinear borders were 0.9 and 1.8° for the small and big stimuli, respectively. Although there is some controversy in literature concerning the spatial extent of extra-classical effects, these gap sizes would most likely allow the effects of collinearity in Kanizsa figures, since contextual modulation can extend up to 3° according to Alexander and Wright (2006) and even up to 12° (Mizobe et al, 2001); even greater values were obtained by way of optical recording in cats (Vanni & Casanova, 2013) [refer also to discussions in Series et al (2003), Murray and Herrmann (2013), and Nurminen and Angelucci (2014)].…”

The Stabilized Supralinear Network: A Unifying Circuit Motif Underlying Multi-Input Integration in Sensory Cortex

“…Surround suppression has been observed in multiple cortical areas, including V1 and V2 in cats (Anderson et al, 2001; Ozeki et al, 2009; Sengpiel et al, 1997; Song and Li, 2008; Tanaka and Ohzawa, 2009; Vanni and Casanova, 2013; Wang et al, 2009), mice (Adesnik et al, 2012; Nienborg et al, 2013; Van den Bergh et al, 2010), and monkeys (Cavanaugh et al, 2002a,b; Sceniak et al, 1999; Schwabe et al, 2010; Shushruth et al, 2009; Van den Bergh et al, 2010), monkey visual areas V4 (Sundberg et al, 2009), MT (Tsui and Pack, 2011), LIP (Falkner et al, 2010) and motor area frontal eye fields (Cavanaugh et al, 2012), and areas serving other sensory modalities ( e.g. , Sachdev et al, 2012).…”

Beyond Rehabilitation of Acuity, Ocular Alignment, and Binocularity in Infantile Strabismus

“…Importantly, because this ON-OFF organization originates from the clustering of ON and OFF thalamic afferents in V 1 , the authors propose that “all features of visual cortical topography, including orientation, direction of movement and retinal disparity, follow a common organizing principle that arranges thalamic axons with similar retinotopy and ON-OFF polarity in neighboring cortical regions” in V 1 . Note finally that sub-threshold facilitation and suppressive surround maps, in correlation with “active” zone and “silent” surrounding zones of receptive fields (see above) were also found in cat visual cortex (Toth et al, 1996 ; Vanni and Casanova, 2013 ; see also below in section Principle of Interactions and of Inter-Dependency of all the Attributes of the Visual Scene).…”