Abstract
We have no difficulty seeing a straight line on a curved piece of paper, but in fact, doing so requires decoupling the shape of the surface from the pattern itself. Here we report a novel form of invariance in the visual cortex: single neurons in monkey inferior temporal cortex respond similarly to congruent transformations of patterns and surfaces, in effect decoupling patterns from the surface on which they are overlaid.
Highlights
NEW & NOTEWORTHY We have no difficulty seeing a straight line on a curved piece of paper, but doing so requires decoupling the shape of the surface from the pattern itself
Our results suggest that inferior temporal (IT) neurons decouple patterns from surfaces to potentially enable complex perceptual inferences
A neuron sensitive only to surface changes would produce similar responses along rows, respectively, which would represent a main effect of surface in the same ANOVA (Fig. 1C, middle)
Summary
NEW & NOTEWORTHY We have no difficulty seeing a straight line on a curved piece of paper, but doing so requires decoupling the shape of the surface from the pattern itself. We report a novel form of invariance in the visual cortex: single neurons in monkey inferior temporal cortex respond to congruent transformations of patterns and surfaces, in effect decoupling patterns from the surface on which they are overlaid. They are modulated by surface curvature (Brincat and Connor 2004; Yamane et al 2008) and show nonlinear interactions between surface fragments (Brincat and Connor 2006) They are selective for three-dimensional shape and show congruent selectivity for surfaces defined by texture or disparity (Liu 2004; Orban 2011). These properties make IT cortex a likely neural substrate for decoupling patterns from surfaces. Our results suggest that IT neurons decouple patterns from surfaces to potentially enable complex perceptual inferences
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