The primary visual cortex fills in color

Abstract

One of the most important goals of visual processing is to reconstruct adequate representations of surfaces in a scene. It is thought that surface representation is produced mainly in the midlevel vision and that area V1 (the primary visual cortex) activity is solely due to feedback from the midlevel stage. Here, we measured functional MRI signals corresponding to “neon color spreading”: an illusory transparent surface with long-range color filling-in, one of the important mediums in reconstructing a surface. The experiment was conducted with careful controls of attention, which can send feedback signals from higher visual areas. Activity for filling-in was observed only in V1, whereas activity for illusory contours was observed in multiple visual areas. These results indicate that surface representation is produced by multiple rather than single processing.