Selective IT neurons are selective along many dimensions

Zhivago, Kalathupiriyan A and Arun, SP (2016) Selective IT neurons are selective along many dimensions. In: JOURNAL OF NEUROPHYSIOLOGY, 115 (3). pp. 1512-1520.

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Abstract

Our visual abilities are unsurpassed because of a sophisticated code for objects located in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex. This code has remained a mystery because IT neurons show extremely diverse shape selectivity with no apparent organizing principle. Here, we show that there is an intrinsic component to selectivity in IT neurons. We tested IT neurons on distinct shapes and their parametric variations and asked whether neurons selective along one dimension were also selective along others. Selective neurons responded to fewer shapes and were narrowly tuned to local variations of these shapes, both along arbitrary morph lines and along variations in size, position, or orientation. For a subset of neurons, selective neurons were selective for both shape and texture. Finally, selective neurons were also more invariant in that they preserved their shape preferences across changes in size, position, and orientation. These observations indicate that there is an intrinsic constraint on the sharpness of tuning for the features coded by each IT neuron, making it always sharply tuned or always broadly tuned along all dimensions. We speculate that this may be an organizing principle throughout visual cortex.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	JOURNAL OF NEUROPHYSIOLOGY
Publisher:	AMER PHYSIOLOGICAL SOC
Additional Information:	Copy right for this article belongs to the AMER PHYSIOLOGICAL SOC, 9650 ROCKVILLE PIKE, BETHESDA, MD 20814 USA
Keywords:	inferotemporal cortex; monkey; object recognition; selectivity; shape coding
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Neuroscience
Date Deposited:	16 Jun 2016 05:49
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2016 05:49
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/54013

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