Friday, May 15, 2015, 9:00 – 11:30 am, Island Ballroom

Dave Knill was a beloved scientist, teacher, and VSS regular who suddenly passed away in 2014. Dave also served on the VSS Board of Directors from 2002 to 2007. Dave got his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1990 with a thesis about the perception of surface shape and reflectance. He did a postdoc at the University of Minnesota, after which he held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Rochester, where he was since 1999. Dave left a towering legacy in many areas of vision science and decision-making, from Bayesian modeling to spatial vision to active sensing to multisensory perception to bounded rationality. In this symposium, a few of Dave’s many trainees and collaborators will commemorate his life and work.

Speakers: Dan Kersten, Paul Schrater, Robert Jacobs, Chris Sims, Krystel Huxlin, Wei Ji Ma

View Introduction

Dan Kersten

Bayesian vision: The early years   View Slides, View Video

By the mid 1980s, computer science had helped to define vision problems to be solved, but had also shown how elusive their solutions could be. Neurophysiology was showing that primate visual processing involved significantly more cortex than had been thought. Marr’s book had just been published and understanding human vision was starting to look like a bigger and more interesting challenge. Around the same time, advances in digital signal processing were providing the means to create, filter and manipulate images. 3D computer graphics was making it possible to generate images from models of objects and scenes. Signal detection theory had been widely used for several decades, but most applications to studies of human vision had involved image patterns as the signals. This was the state of affairs when David Knill began his graduate work at Brown University. In my talk, I will describe the enormous role David played over the subsequent ten years in developing our understanding of objects and scenes as signals, images as their causal results, and from there, perception as Bayesian inference.

Paul Schrater

Perception for action   View Slides, View Video

Cue integration formed a critical problem when I was Dave’s graduate student and formed one of Dave’s research foci throughout his career. I will describe Dave’s key contributions to the conceptualization of cues, Bayesian approaches and methods for elicitation. As we both moved to visuomotor control, we began to reconceptualize cue integration from a control perspective. I will trace that history and describe its deep influence on more recent work where we challenge  the idea of cues as information towards privileged variables like object shape, size or location, and instead develop the idea that integrating perceptual information should subserve the goals of action. In effect, what you are doing determines what information is relevant, which variables should be estimated, and how perceptual input relates to the variables needed to make control decisions. I’ll review Dave’s innovative approaches to assessing cue integration, from slant from texture to visual signals to hand location. I’ll also describe a cue integration experiment where subjects successfully learned to integrate visual and auditory cues in non-standard ways in order to control an object. Throughout, Dave’s pioneering use of probabilistic modeling for conceptual development, stimulus design and data analysis will be highlighted.

Robert Jacobs

Theoretical approaches to multisensory perception   View Slides, View Video

I will start by describing research that was generated by Dave’s scientific creativity, rigor, and passion. This research, conducted by Joseph Atkins, Dave, and me, examined how inconsistent sensory signals in a multisensory (visual-haptic) environment can lead people to recalibrate how they combine depth information from multiple visual cues. I will then review subsequent research from my lab on crossmodal transfer of object shape knowledge across visual and haptic modalities, as well as work on transfer of knowledge from a perception task to a motor production task. Dave and I were both interested in sensory integration, multisensory perception, and possible relationships between perception and motor production. Talking with Dave about all of these topics was great fun and often insightful.

Chris Sims

Bounded rationality   View Slides, View Video

Dave Knill wasn’t content to observe or measure human behavior, he wanted to explain it. To Dave, an explanation for behavior and brain function almost always consisted of its elegant and parsimonious restatement as the solution to a computational problem. During the time I spent in his lab, I focused on two projects: Understanding the adaptive allocation of visual gaze in complex tasks (an offshoot of his work in visual-motor control with Jeff Saunders), and redefining visual working memory as the problem of minimizing behavioral costs under a capacity constraint (building on his work with Anne-Marie Brouwer). This latter project advanced information theory as a principled approach to defining the limits of visual working memory. In hindsight, both projects are really about bounded rationality—computational explorations of the idea that the brain can be highly limited, and yet simultaneously efficient. Dave was selfless as a mentor, and I am honored to have had the chance to grow as a scientist working in his laboratory.

Krystel Huxlin

Impact of vision lost and regained on direction of heading estimates from optic flow   View Slides, View Video

Understanding this was the goal of the research Dave and I were pursuing with our graduate student, Laurel Issen. Dave passed away before this goal could be fully realized but it illustrates his openness and willingness to apply rigorous approaches to the study of clinical problems. I will start by explaining why our original question was (and still remains) of interest in the context of cortically blind people. My lab studies how visual training restores some of the vision lost in this patient population. It was of great interest for Dave and me to better understand why the cortically blind, who retain at least one intact hemifield of vision in both eyes, have such trouble navigating and orienting in their environment. Answering this question represents a first step in assessing whether restoring some of the vision lost is likely to impact visually-guided functions and ultimately, quality of life in this patient population.

Wei Ji Ma

Mixture priors and causal inference   View Slides, View Video

Although Dave was one of the humblest people you would ever meet, the theoretical and empirical contributions he made to perception research are second to none. I will highlight mixture priors and causal inference, two intertwined computational concepts related to the inference of hidden causes. In a seminal 2003 paper on depth perception, he introduced the concept of mixture priors in vision. He later studied visuo-memory cue combination in a naturalistic reaching task with Anne-Marie Brouwer. In 2008, I worked on an extension of this study with him, in which we explored causal inference in the same reaching task. Very recently, Dave and Oh-Sang Kwon used the same notion of causal inference to explain how the brain resolves conflicts between local and global motion cues. Dave was a dear friend, an amazingly selfless and patient mentor, and one of the best scientists I have known.

Time/Room: Friday, May 11, 1:00 – 3:00 pm, Royal Ballroom 6-8
Organizer: Johan Wagemans, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven
Presenters: Johan Wagemans, Charles E. Connor, Scott O. Murray, James R. Pomerantz, Jacob Feldman, Shaul Hochstein

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Symposium Description

With his famous paper on phi motion, Wertheimer (1912) launched Gestalt psychology, arguing that the whole is different from the sum of the parts. In fact, wholes were considered primary in perceptual experience, even determining what the parts are. Gestalt claims about global precedence and configural superiority are difficult to reconcile with what we now know about the visual brain, with a hierarchy from lower areas processing smaller parts of the visual field and higher areas responding to combinations of these parts in ways that are gradually more invariant to low-level changes to the input and corresponding more closely to perceptual experience. What exactly are the relationships between parts and wholes then? Are wholes constructed from combinations of the parts? If so, to what extent are the combinations additive, what does superadditivity really mean, and how does it arise along the visual hierarchy? How much of the combination process occurs in incremental feedforward iterations or horizontal connections and at what stage does feedback from higher areas kick in? What happens to the representation of the lower-level parts when the higher-level wholes are perceived? Do they become enhanced or suppressed (“explained away”)? Or, are wholes occurring before the parts, as argued by Gestalt psychologists? But what does this global precedence really mean in terms of what happens where in the brain? Does the primacy of the whole only account for consciously perceived figures or objects, and are the more elementary parts still combined somehow during an unconscious step-wise processing stage? A century later, tools are available that were not at the Gestaltists’ disposal to address these questions. In this symposium, we will take stock and try to provide answers from a diversity of approaches, including single-cell recordings from V4, posterior and anterior IT cortex in awake monkeys (Ed Connor, Johns Hopkins University), human fMRI (Scott Murray, University of Washington), human psychophysics (James Pomerantz, Rice University), and computational modeling (Jacob Feldman, Rutgers University). Johan Wagemans (University of Leuven) will introduce the theme of the symposium with a brief historical overview of the Gestalt tradition and a clarification of the conceptual issues involved. Shaul Hochstein (Hebrew University) will end with a synthesis of the current literature, in the framework of Reverse Hierarchy Theory. The scientific merit of addressing such a central issue, which has been around for over a century, from a diversity of modern perspectives and in light of the latest findings should be obvious. The celebration of the centennial anniversary of Gestalt psychology also provides an excellent opportunity to doing so. We believe our line-up of speakers, addressing a set of closely related questions, from a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives, promises to be attracting a large crowd, including students and faculty working in psychophysics, neurosciences and modeling. In comparison with other proposals taking this centennial anniversary as a window of opportunity, ours is probably more focused and allows for a more coherent treatment of a central Gestalt issue, which has been bothering vision science for a long time.

Presentations

Part-whole relationships in vision science: A brief historical review and conceptual analysis

Johan Wagemans, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven

Exactly 100 years ago, Wertheimer’s paper on phi motion (1912) effectively launched the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology. Arguing against elementalism and associationism, they maintained that experienced objects and relationships are fundamentally different from collections of sensations. Going beyond von Ehrenfels’s notion of Gestalt qualities, which involved one-sided dependence on sense data, true Gestalts are dynamic structures in experience that determine what will be wholes and parts. From the beginning, this two-sided dependence between parts and wholes was believed to have a neural basis. They spoke of continuous “whole-processes” in the brain, and argued that research needed to try to understand these from top (whole) to bottom (parts ) rather than the other way around. However, Gestalt claims about global precedence and configural superiority are difficult to reconcile with what we now know about the visual brain, with a hierarchy from lower areas processing smaller parts of the visual field and higher areas responding to combinations of these parts in ways that are gradually more invariant to low-level changes to the input and corresponding more closely to perceptual experience. What exactly are the relationships between parts and wholes then? In this talk, I will briefly review the Gestalt position and analyse the different notions of part and whole, and different views on part-whole relationships maintained in a century of vision science since the start of Gestalt psychology. This will provide some necessary background for the remaining talks in this symposium, which will all present contemporary views based on new findings.

Ventral pathway visual cortex: Representation by parts in a whole object reference frame

Charles E. Connor, Department of Neuroscience and Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Anitha Pasupathy, Scott L. Brincat, Yukako Yamane, Chia-Chun Hung

Object perception by humans and other primates depends on the ventral pathway of visual cortex, which processes information about object structure, color, texture, and identity.  Object information processing can be studied at the algorithmic, neural coding level using electrode recording in macaque monkeys.  We have studied information processing in three successive stages of the monkey ventral pathway:  area V4, PIT (posterior inferotemporal cortex), and AIT (anterior inferotemporal cortex).  At all three stages, object structure is encoded in terms of parts, including boundary fragments (2D contours, 3D surfaces) and medial axis components (skeletal shape fragments).  Area V4 neurons integrate information about multiple orientations to produce signals for local contour fragments.  PIT neurons integrate multiple V4 inputs to produce representations of multi-fragment configurations.  Even neurons in AIT, the final stage of the monkey ventral pathway, represent configurations of parts (as opposed to holistic object structure).  However, at each processing stage, neural responses are critically dependent on the position of parts within the whole object.  Thus, a given neuron may respond strongly to a specific contour fragment positioned near the right side of an object but not at all when it is positioned near the left.  This kind of object-centered position tuning would serve an essential role by representing spatial arrangement within a distributed, parts-based coding scheme. Object-centered position sensitivity is not imposed by top-down feedback, since it is apparent in the earliest responses at lower stages, before activity begins at higher stages.  Thus, while the brain encodes objects in terms of their constituent parts, the relationship of those parts to the whole object is critical at each stage of ventral pathway processing.

Long-range, pattern-dependent contextual effects in early human visual cortex

Scott O. Murray, Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Sung Jun Joo, Geoffrey M. Boynton

The standard view of neurons in early visual cortex is that they behave like localized feature detectors. We will discuss recent results that demonstrate that neurons in early visual areas go beyond localized feature detection and are sensitive to part-whole relationships in images. We measured neural responses to a grating stimulus (“target”) embedded in various visual patterns as defined by the relative orientation of flanking stimuli. We varied whether or not the target was part of a predictable sequence by changing the orientation of distant gratings while maintaining the same local stimulus arrangement. For example, a vertically oriented target grating that is flanked locally with horizontal flankers (HVH) can be made to be part of a predictable sequence by adding vertical distant flankers (VHVHV). We found that even when the local configuration (e.g. HVH) around the target was kept the same there was a smaller neural response when the target was part of a predictable sequence (VHVHV). Furthermore, when making an orientation judgment of a “noise” stimulus that contains no specific orientation information, observers were biased to “see” the orientation that deviates from the predictable orientation, consistent with computational models of primate cortical processing that incorporate efficient coding principles. Our results suggest that early visual cortex is sensitive to global patterns in images in a way that is markedly different from the predictions of standard models of cortical visual processing and indicate an important role in coding part-whole relationships in images.

The computational and cortical bases for configural superiority

James R. Pomerantz, Department of Psychology, Rice University, Anna I. Cragin, Department of Psychology, Rice University; Kimberley D. Orsten, Department of Psychology, Rice University; Mary C. Portillo, Department of Social Sciences, University of Houston-Downtown

In the configural superiority effect (CSE; Pomerantz et al., 1977; Pomerantz & Portillo, 2011), people respond more quickly to a whole configuration than to any one of its component parts, even when the parts added to create a whole contribute no information by themselves.  For example, people discriminate an arrow from a triangle more quickly than a positive from a negative diagonal even when those diagonals constitute the only difference between the arrows and triangles.  How can a neural or other computational system be faster at processing information about combinations of parts – wholes – than about parts taken singly?   We consider the results of Kubilius et al. (2011) and discuss three possibilities: (1) Direct detection of wholes through smart mechanisms that compute higher order information without performing seemingly necessary intermediate computations; (2) the “sealed channel hypothesis” (Pomerantz, 1978), which holds that part information is extracted prior to whole information in a feedforward manner but is not available for responses; and (3) a closely related reverse hierarchy model holding that conscious experience begins with higher cortical levels processing wholes, with parts becoming accessible to consciousness only after feedback to lower levels is complete (Hochstein & Ahissar, 2002).  We describe a number of CSEs and elaborate both on these mechanisms that might explain them and how they might be confirmed experimentally.

Computational integration of local and global form

Jacob Feldman, Dept. of Psychology, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University – New Brunswick, Manish Singh, Vicky Froyen

A central theme of perceptual theory, from the Gestaltists to the present, has been the integration of local and global image information. While neuroscience has traditionally viewed perceptual processes as beginning with local operators with small receptive fields before proceeding on to more global operators with larger ones, a substantial body of evidence now suggests that supposedly later processes can impose decisive influences on supposedly earlier ones, suggesting a more complicated flow of information. We consider this problem from a computational point of view. Some local processes in perceptual organization, like the organization of visual items into a local contour, can be well understood in terms of simple probabilistic inference models. But for a variety of reasons nonlocal factors such as global “form” resist such simple models. In this talk I’ll discuss constraints on how form- and region-generating probabilistic models can be formulated and integrated with local ones. From a computational point of view, the central challenge is how to embed the corresponding estimation procedure in a locally-connected network-like architecture that can be understood as a model of neural computation.

The rise and fall of the Gestalt gist

Shaul Hochstein, Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology, Hebrew University, Merav Ahissar

Reviewing the current literature, one finds physiological bases for Gestalt-like perception, but also much that seems to contradict the predictions of this theory. Some resolution may be found in the framework of Reverse Hierarchy Theory, dividing between implicit processes, of which we are unaware, and explicit representations, which enter perceptual consciousness. It is the conscious percepts that appear to match Gestalt predictions – recognizing wholes even before the parts. We now need to study the processing mechanisms at each level, and, importantly, the feedback interactions which equally affect and determine the plethora of representations that are formed, and to analyze how they determine conscious perception. Reverse Hierarchy Theory proposes that initial perception of the gist of a scene – including whole objects, categories and concepts – depends on rapid bottom-up implicit processes, which seems to follow (determine) Gestalt rules. Since lower level representations are initially unavailable to consciousness – and may become available only with top-down guidance – perception seems to immediately jump to Gestalt conclusions. Nevertheless, vision at a blink of the eye is the result of many layers of processing, though introspection is blind to these steps, failing to see the trees within the forest. Later, slower perception, focusing on specific details, reveals the source of Gestalt processes – and destroys them at the same time. Details of recent results, including micro-genesis analyses, will be reviewed within the framework of Gestalt and Reverse Hierarchy theories.

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Time/Room: Friday, May 11, 1:00 – 3:00 pm, Royal Ballroom 1-3
Organizer: Vivien A. Casagrande, PhD, Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, Vanderbilt Medical School Nashville, TN
Presenters: Gopathy Purushothaman, Christian Casanova, Heywood M. Petry, Robert H. Wurtz, Sabine Kastner, David Whitney

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Symposium Description

The thalamus is considered the gateway to the cortex. Yet, even the late Ted Jones who wrote two huge volumes on the organization of the thalamus remarked that we know amazingly little about many of its components and their role in cortical function. This is despite the fact that a major two-way highway connects all areas of cortex with the thalamus. The pulvinar is the largest thalamic nucleus in mammals; it progressively enlarged during primate evolution, dwarfing the rest of the thalamus in humans. The pulvinar also remains the most mysterious of thalamic nucleus in terms of its function. This symposium brings together six speakers from quite different perspectives who, using tools from anatomy, neurochemistry, physiology, neuroimaging and behavior will highlight intriguing recent insights into the structure and function of the pulvinar.  The speakers will jointly touch on: 1) the complexity of architecture, connections and neurochemistry of the pulvinar, 2) potential species similarities and differences in pulvinar’s role in transmitting visual information from subcortical visual areas to cortical areas, 3) the role of pulvinar in eye movements and in saccadic suppression, 4) the role of pulvinar in regulating cortico-cortical communication between visual cortical areas and finally, 5)  converging ideas on the mechanisms that might explain the role of the pulvinar under the larger functional umbrella of visual salience and attention.  Specifically, the speakers will address the following issues.  Purushothaman and Casanova will outline contrasting roles for pulvinar in influencing visual signals in early visual cortex in primates and non- primates, respectively.  Petry and Wurtz will describe the organization and the potential role of retino-tectal inputs to the pulvinar, and that of pulvinar projections to the middle temporal (MT/V5) visual area in primate and its equivalent in non-primates. Wurtz also will consider the role of pulvinar in saccadic suppression.  Kastner will describe the role of the pulvinar in regulating information transfer between cortical areas in primates trained to perform an attention task. Whitney will examine the role of pulvinar in human visual attention and perceptual discrimination.    This symposium should attract a wide audience from Visual Science Society (VSS) participants as the function of the thalamus is key to understanding cortical organization.  Studies of the pulvinar and its role in vision have seen a new renaissance given the new technologies available to reveal its function.  The goal of this session will be to provide the VSS audience with a new appreciation of the role of the thalamus in vision.

Presentations

Gating of the Primary Visual Cortex by Pulvinar for Controlling Bottom-Up Salience

Gopathy Purushothaman, PhD, Department of Cell & Developmental Biology Vanderbilt, Roan Marion, Keji Li and Vivien A. Casagrande Vanderbilt University

The thalamic nucleus pulvinar has been implicated in the control of visual attention.  Its reciprocal connections with both frontal and sensory cortices can coordinate top-down and bottom-up processes for selective visual attention.  However, pulvino-cortical neural interactions are little understood.  We recently found that the lateral pulvinar (PL) powerfully controls stimulus-driven responses in the primary visual cortex (V1).  Reversibly inactivating PL abolished visual responses in supra-granular layers of V1.  Excitation of PL neurons responsive to one region of visual space increased 4-fold V1 responses to this region and decreased 3-fold V1 responses to the surrounding region.  Glutamate agonist injection in LGN increased V1 activity 8-fold and induced an excitotoxic lesion of LGN; subsequently injecting the glutamate agonist into PL increased V1 activity 14-fold.  Spontaneous activity in PL and V1 following visual stimulation were strongly coupled and selectively entrained at the stimulation frequency.  These results suggest that PL-V1 interactions are well-suited to control bottom-up salience within a competitive cortico-pulvino-cortical network for selective attention.

Is The Pulvinar Driving or Modulating Responses in the Visual Cortex?

Christian Casanova, PhD, Univ. Montreal, CP 6128 Succ Centre-Ville, Sch Optometry, Montreal , Canada, Matthieu Vanni & Reza F. Abbas & Sébastien Thomas. Visual Neuroscience Laboratory, School of Optometry, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

Signals from lower cortical areas are not only transferred directly to higher-order cortical areas via cortico-cortical connections but also indirectly through cortico-thalamo-cortical projections. One step toward the understanding of the role of transthalamic corticocortical pathways is to determine the nature of the signals transmitted between the cortex and the thalamus. Are they strictly modulatory, i.e. are they modifying the activity in relation to the stimulus context and the analysis being done in the projecting area, or are they used to establish basic functional characteristics of cortical cells?  While the presence of drivers and modulators has been clearly demonstrated along the retino-geniculo-cortical pathway, it is not known whether such distinction can be made functionally in pathways involving the pulvinar. Since drivers and modulators can exhibit a different temporal pattern of response, we measured the spatiotemporal dynamics of voltage sensitive dyes activation in the visual cortex following pulvinar electrical stimulation in cats and tree shrews. Stimulation of pulvinar induced fast and local responses in extrastriate cortex. In contrast, the propagated waves in the primary visual cortex (V1) were weak in amplitude and diffuse. Co-stimulating pulvinar and LGN produced responses in V1 that were weaker than the sum of the responses evoked by the independent stimulation of both nuclei. These findings support the presence of drivers and modulators along pulvinar pathways and suggest that the pulvinar can exert a modulatory influence in cortical processing of LGN inputs in V1 while it mainly provides driver inputs to extrastriate areas, reflecting the different connectivity patterns.

What is the role of the pulvinar nucleus in visual motion processing?

Heywood M. Petry, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Martha E. Bickford, Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology, University of Louisville School of Medicine

To effectively interact with our environment, body movements must be coordinated with the perception of visual movement. We will present evidence that regions of the pulvinar nucleus that receive input from the superior colliculus (tectum) may be involved in this process. We have chosen the tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri, a prototype of early primates), as our animal model because tectopulvinar pathways are particularly enhanced in this species, and our psychophysical experiments have revealed that tree shrews are capable of accurately discriminating small differences in the speed and direction of moving visual displays. Using in vivo electrophysiological recording techniques to test receptive field properties, we found that pulvinar neurons are responsive to moving visual stimuli, and most are direction selective. Using anatomical techniques, we found that tectorecipient pulvinar neurons project to the striatum, amygdala, and temporal cortical areas homologous to the primate middle temporal area, MT/V5. Using in vitro recording techniques, immunohistochemistry and stereology, we found that tectorecipient pulvinar neurons express more calcium channels than other thalamic nuclei and thus display a higher propensity to fire with bursts of action potentials, potentially providing a mechanism to effectively coordinate the activity of cortical and subcortical pulvinar targets. Collectively, these results suggest that the pulvinar nucleus may relay visual movement signals from the superior colliculus to subcortical brain regions to guide body movements, and simultaneously to the temporal cortex to modify visual perception as we move though our environment.

One message the pulvinar sends to cortex

Robert H. Wurtz, NIH-NEI, Lab of Sensorimotor Research, Rebecca Berman, NIH-NEI, Lab of Sensorimotor Research

The pulvinar has long been recognized as a way station on a second visual pathway to the cerebral cortex. This identification has largely been based on the pulvinar’s connections, which are appropriate for providing visual information to multiple regions of visual cortex from subcortical areas. What is little known is what information pulvinar actually conveys especially in the intact functioning visual system.  We have identified one pathway through the pulvinar that extends from superior colliculus superficial visual layers though inferior pulvinar (principally PIm) to cortical area MT by using the techniques of combined anti- and orthodromic stimulation. We now have explored what this pathway might convey to cortex and have first concentrated on a modulation of visual processing first seen in SC, the suppression of visual responses during saccades.  We have been able to replicate the previous observations of the suppression in SC and in MT and now show that PIm neurons also are similarly suppressed.  We have then inactivated SC and shown that the suppression in MT is reduced. While we do not know all of the signals conveyed through this pathway to cortex, we do have evidence for one: the suppression of vision during saccades. This signal is neither a visual nor a motor signal but conveys the action of an internal motor signal on visual processing.  Furthermore combining our results in the behaving monkey with recent experiments in mouse brain slices (Phongphanphanee et al. 2011) provides a complete circuit from brainstem to cortex for conveying this suppression.

Role of the pulvinar in regulating information transmission between cortical areas

Sabine Kastner, MD, Department of Psychology, Center for Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, Green Hall, Princeton, Yuri B. Saalman, Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University

Recent studies suggest that the degree of neural synchrony between cortical areas can modulate their information transfer according to attentional needs. However, it is not clear how two cortical areas synchronize their activities. Directly connected cortical areas are generally also indirectly connected via the thalamic nucleus, the pulvinar. We hypothesized that the pulvinar helps synchronize activity between cortical areas, and tested this by simultaneously recording from the pulvinar, V4, TEO and LIP of macaque monkeys performing a spatial attention task. Electrodes targeted interconnected sites between these areas, as determined by probabilistic tractography on diffusion tensor imaging data. Spatial attention increased synchrony between the cortical areas in the beta frequency range, in line with increased causal influence of the pulvinar on the cortex at the same frequencies. These results suggest that the pulvinar co-ordinates activity between cortical areas, to increase the efficacy of cortico-cortical transmission.

Visual Attention Gates Spatial Coding in the Human Pulvinar

David Whitney, The University of California, Berkeley, Jason Fischer, The University of California, Berkeley

Based on the pulvinar’s widespread connectivity with the visual cortex, as well as with putative attentional source regions in the frontal and parietal lobes, the pulvinar is suspected to play an important role in visual attention. However, there remain many hypotheses on the pulvinar’s specific function. One hypothesis is that the pulvinar may play a role in filtering distracting stimuli when they are actively ignored. Because it remains unclear whether this is the case, how this might happen, or what the fate of the ignored objects is, we sought to characterize the spatial representation of visual information in the human pulvinar for equally salient attended and ignored objects that were presented simultaneously. In an fMRI experiment, we measured the spatial precision with which attended and ignored stimuli were encoded in the pulvinar, and we found that attention completely gated position information: attended objects were encoded with high spatial precision, but there was no measurable spatial encoding of actively ignored objects. This is despite the fact that the attended and ignored objects were identical and present simultaneously, and both attended and ignored objects were represented with great precision throughout the visual cortex. These data support a role for the pulvinar in distractor filtering and reveal a possible mechanism: by modulating the spatial precision of stimulus encoding, signals from competing stimuli can be suppressed in order to isolate behaviorally relevant objects.

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