Mammalian striate and circumstriate cortical neurons have long been understood as coding spatially localized retinal luminance variations, providing a basis for computing motion, stereopsis, and contours from the retinal image. However, such perceptual attributes do not always correspond to the retinal luminance variations in natural vision. Recordings from area 17 and 18 neurons revealed a specialized nonlinear processing stream that responded to stimulus attributes having no corresponding luminance variations. This nonlinear stream acts in parallel to the conventional luminance processing of single cortical neurons. The two streams were consistent in their preference for orientation and direction of motion, but distinct in processing spatial variations of the stimulus attributes. The ensemble of these neurons provides a combination of stimulus attributes with and without corresponding luminance variations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.41806 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Zhou, Yi-Xiong |
| Contributors | Baker, Curtis L., Jr. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001421252, proquestno: NN94732, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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