Nonstimulated early visual areas carry information about surrounding context
Open accessAbstract
Even within the early sensory areas, the majority of the input to any given cortical neuron comes from other cortical neurons. To extend our knowledge of the contextual information that is transmitted by such lateral and feedback connections, we investigated how visually nonstimulated regions in primary visual cortex (V1) and visual area V2 are influenced by the surrounding context. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and pattern-classification methods to show that the cortical representation of a nonstimulated quarter-field carries information that can discriminate the surrounding visual context. We show further that the activity patterns in these regions are significantly related to those observed with feed-forward stimulation and that these effects are driven primarily by V1. These results thus demonstrate that visual context strongly influences early visual areas even in the absence of differential feed-forward thalamic stimulation.
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Simple feature representations in early visual cortex (V1/V2) are modulated by object context from lateral occipital cortex and motion context from V5/MT.
“Similarly, simple feature representations in early visual cortex (V1/V2) are modulated by object context from lateral occipital cortex (LOC) [33][34][35] and motion context from V5/MT [36,37].”
From How Do Expectations Shape Perception? (2018) · cites this paper as [35]
The Discussion (page not available in our copy) supports a contextual effect in early visual cortex, primarily V1, but says there was barely any evidence of context sensitivity in V2. It mentions MT only as a possible source of feedback and says feedback could not be disentangled from lateral interactions; it does not establish that motion context from V5/MT modulates simple feature representations. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredActivity patterns in nonstimulated parts of early visual cortex contain content-specific information from the surrounding visual context, from objects presented in the periphery, and from visual stimuli solely held in working memory rather than being actively perceived.
“For example, activity patterns in nonstimulated parts of early visual cortex contain content-specific information from the surrounding visual context [31, 32], from objects presented in the periphery [33], and from visual stimuli solely held in working memory rather than being actively perceived [34, 35].”
From Decoding sound and imagery content in early visual cortex (2014) · cites this paper as [31]
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“, 2018) and information carrying (Smith and Muckli, 2010) feedback to early visual areas (cf.”
BackgroundInfluential
- Authors
- Smith, F. W., & Muckli, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Glasgow (GB)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2010-11
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 46
- Pages
- 20099-20103
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC2993348
- OpenAlex
- W2021546183
- Cited by
- 238
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 5.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ENLIGHTEN (Jurnal Bimbingan dan Konseling Islam) (acceptedVersion)
- UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Directorate for Biological Sciences
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/G005044/1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- visual context, primary visual cortex, visual area V2, lateral connections, feedback connections, cortical representation, pattern classification, visual cortex
- MeSH terms
- Algorithms, Brain Mapping, Humans, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Photic Stimulation, Visual Cortex, Discriminant Analysis
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