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Temporally Evolving Gain Mechanisms of Attention in Macaque Area V4, J Neurophysiol, jn 00522 02016.

Temporally Evolving Gain Mechanisms of Attention in Macaque Area V4, J Neurophysiol, jn 00522 02016.

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Cognitive attention and perceptual saliency jointly govern our interaction with the environment. Yet, we still lack a universally accepted account of the interplay between attention and luminance contrast – a fundamental dimension of saliency. We measured the attentional modulation of V4 neurons’ Contrast Response Functions (CRFs) in awake, behaving macaque monkeys and applied a new approach which emphasizes the temporal dynamics of cell responses. We found that attention modulates CRFs via different gain mechanisms during subsequent epochs of visually driven activity: an early contrast-gain – strongly dependent on pre-stimulus activity changes (baseline shift), a time-limited stimulus-dependent multiplicative modulation, reaching its maximal expression around 150 ms after stimulus onset, and a late resurgence of contrast-gain modulation. Attention produced comparable time-dependent attentional gain changes on cells heterogeneously coding contrast, supporting the notion that the same circuits mediate attention mechanisms in V4 regardless of the form of contrast selectivity expressed by the given neuron. Surprisingly, attention was also sometimes capable of inducing radical transformations in the shape of CRFs. These findings offer important insights into the mechanisms that underlie contrast coding and attention in primate visual cortex and a new perspective on their interplay, one in which time becomes a fundamental factor.

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Autism is associated with reduced ability to interpret grasping actions of others, Sci Rep, 1 (7), 12687.

Autism is associated with reduced ability to interpret grasping actions of others, Sci Rep, 1 (7), 12687.

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We investigated the ability of children with ASD to discriminate a small cylinder from a large cube by observing a point-light movie of an actor grasping the object, either from an allocentric or egocentric viewpoint (observing action of others or self). Compared with typically developing controls, high functioning autistic children showed a strong selective impairment in this task, but only with the allocentric viewpoint, where thresholds were twice as high: egocentric thresholds were similar to age- and ability-matched controls. The magnitude of the impairment correlated strongly with the degree of symptomology (R2 = 0.5). The results suggest that children with ASD might be impaired in their ability to predict and infer the consequences of others’ movements, which could be related to the social-communicative deficits often reported in autism.

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Evidence for a number sense, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (40), 18-19.

Evidence for a number sense, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (40), 18-19.

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Numerosity is inherently confounded by related stimulus attributes such as density and area, and many studies have reported interactions of various strengths between area, density, and numerosity. However, direct measurements of sensitivity within the area-density-numerosity space show that numerosity emerges as the most spontaneous and sensitive dimension, strongly supporting the existence of a dedicated number sense.

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Evidence for a number sense, Perceiving numerosity from birth, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (40), 21-22.

Perceiving numerosity from birth, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (40), 21-22.

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Leibovich et al. opened up an important discussion on the nature and origins of numerosity perception. The authors rightly point out that non-numerical features of stimuli influence this ability. Despite these biases, there is evidence that from birth, humans perceive and represent numerosities, and not just non-numerical quantitative features such as item size, density, and convex hull.

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Area Prostriata in the Human Brain, Curr Biol, 19 (27), 3056-3060 e3053.

Area Prostriata in the Human Brain, Curr Biol, 19 (27), 3056-3060 e3053.

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Area prostriata is a cortical area at the fundus of the calcarine sulcus, described anatomically in humans [ 1–5 ] and other primates [ 6–9 ]. It is lightly myelinated and lacks the clearly defined six-layer structure evident throughout the cerebral cortex, with a thinner layer 4 and thicker layer 2 [ 10 ], characteristic of limbic cortex [ 11 ]. In the marmoset and rhesus monkey, area prostriata has cortical connections with MT+ [ 12 ], the cingulate motor cortex [ 8 ], the auditory cortex [ 13 ], the orbitofrontal cortex, and the frontal polar cortices [ 14 ]. Here we use functional magnetic resonance together with a wide-field projection system to study its functional properties in humans. With population receptive field mapping [ 15 ], we show that area prostriata has a complete representation of the visual field, clearly distinct from the adjacent area V1. As in the marmoset, the caudal-dorsal border of human prostriata—abutting V1—represents the far peripheral visual field, with eccentricities decreasing toward its rostral boundary. Area prostriata responds strongly to very fast motion, greater than 500°/s. The functional properties of area prostriata suggest that it may serve to alert the brain quickly to fast visual events, particularly in the peripheral visual field.

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Spatial localization of sound elicits early responses from occipital visual cortex in humans, Sci Rep, 1 (7), 10415.

Spatial localization of sound elicits early responses from occipital visual cortex in humans, Sci Rep, 1 (7), 10415.

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Much evidence points to an interaction between vision and audition at early cortical sites. However, the functional role of these interactions is not yet understood. Here we show an early response of the occipital cortex to sound that it is strongly linked to the spatial localization task performed by the observer. The early occipital response to a sound, usually absent, increased by more than 10-fold when presented during a space localization task, but not during a time localization task. The response amplification was not only specific to the task, but surprisingly also to the position of the stimulus in the two hemifields. We suggest that early occipital processing of sound is linked to the construction of an audio spatial map that may utilize the visual map of the occipital cortex.

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Auditory Sensitivity and Decision Criteria Oscillate at Different Frequencies Separately for the Two Ears, Current Biology,

Auditory Sensitivity and Decision Criteria Oscillate at Different Frequencies Separately for the Two Ears, Current Biology,

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Many behavioral measures of visual perception fluctuate continually in a rhythmic manner, reflecting the influence of endogenous brain oscillations, particularly theta (~4–7 Hz) and alpha (~8–12 Hz) rhythms. However, it is unclear whether these oscillations are unique to vision or whether auditory performance also oscillates. Several studies report no oscillatory modulation in audition, while those with positive findings suffer from confounds relating to neural entrainment. Here, we used a bilateral pitch-identification task to investigate rhythmic fluctuations in auditory performance separately for the two ears and applied signal detection theory (SDT) to test for oscillations of both sensitivity and criterion (changes in decision boundary). Using uncorrelated dichotic white noise to induce a phase reset of oscillations, we demonstrate that, as with vision, both auditory sensitivity and criterion showed strong oscillations over time, at different frequencies: ~6 Hz (theta range) for sensitivity and ~8 Hz (low alpha range) for criterion, implying distinct underlying sampling mechanisms. The modulation in sensitivity in left and right ears was in antiphase, suggestive of attention-like mechanisms sampling alternatively from the two ears.

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Plasticity of the human visual brain after an early cortical lesion, Neuropsychologia.

Plasticity of the human visual brain after an early cortical lesion, Neuropsychologia.

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In adults, partial damage to V1 or optic radiations abolishes perception in the corresponding part of the visual field, causing a scotoma. However, it is widely accepted that the developing cortex has superior capacities to reorganize following an early lesion to endorse adaptive plasticity. Here we report a single patient case (G.S.) with near normal central field vision despite a massive unilateral lesion to the optic radiations acquired early in life. The patient underwent surgical removal of a right hemisphere parieto-temporal-occipital atypical choroid plexus papilloma of the right lateral ventricle at four months of age, which presumably altered the visual pathways during in utero development. Both the tumor and surgery severely compromised the optic radiations. Residual vision of G.S. was tested psychophysically when the patient was 7 years old. We found a close-to-normal visual acuity and contrast sensitivity within the central 25 degrees and a great impairment in form and contrast vision in the far periphery (40-50 degrees ) of the left visual hemifield. BOLD response to full field luminance flicker was recorded from the primary visual cortex (V1) and in a region in the residual temporal-occipital region, presumably corresponding to the middle temporal complex (MT+), of the lesioned (right) hemisphere. A population receptive field analysis of the BOLD responses to contrast modulated stimuli revealed a retinotopic organization just for the MT+ region but not for the calcarine regions. Interestingly, consistent islands of ipsilateral activity were found in MT+ and in the parieto-occipital sulcus (POS) of the intact hemisphere. Probabilistic tractography revealed that optic radiations between LGN and V1 were very sparse in the lesioned hemisphere consistently with the post-surgery cerebral resection, while normal in the intact hemisphere. On the other hand, strong structural connections between MT+ and LGN were found in the lesioned hemisphere, while the equivalent tract in the spared hemisphere showed minimal structural connectivity. These results suggest that during development of the pathological brain, abnormal thalamic projections can lead to functional cortical changes, which may mediate functional recovery of vision.

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Connecting Visual Objects Reduces Perceived Numerosity and Density for Sparse but not Dense Patterns, Journal of Numerical Cognition, 4 (3).

Connecting Visual Objects Reduces Perceived Numerosity and Density for Sparse but not Dense Patterns, Journal of Numerical Cognition, 4 (3).

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How is numerosity encoded by the visual system? – directly, or derived indirectly from texture density? We recently suggested that the numerosity of sparse patterns is encoded directly by dedicated mechanisms (which have been described as the “Approximate Number System” ANS). However, at high dot densities, where items become “crowded” and difficult to segregate, “texture-density” mechanisms come into play. Here we tested the importance of item segmentation on numerosity and density perception at various stimulus densities, by measuring the effect of connecting visual objects with thin lines. The results confirmed many previous studies showing that connecting items robustly reduces the apparent numerosity of patterns of moderate density. We further showed that the apparent density of moderate-density patterns is also reduced by connecting the dots. Crucially, we found that both these effects are strongly reduced at higher numerosities. Indeed for density judgments, the effect reverses, so connecting dots in dense patterns increases the apparent density (as expected from the physical characteristics). The results provide clear support for the three-regime framework of number perception, and suggest that for moderately sparse stimuli, numerosity – but not texture-density – is perceived directly.