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The Journal of Neuroscience, February 15, 2001, 21(4):1340-1350
Noticing Familiar Objects in Real World Scenes: The Role of
Temporal Cortical Neurons in Natural Vision
David L.
Sheinberg and
Nikos K.
Logothetis
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen,
Germany 72076
During natural vision, the brain efficiently processes views of the
external world as the eyes actively scan the environment. To better
understand the neural mechanisms underlying this process, we recorded
the activity of individual temporal cortical neurons while monkeys
looked for and identified familiar targets embedded in natural scenes.
We found a group of visual neurons that exhibited stimulus-selective
neuronal bursts just before the monkey's response. Most of these cells
showed similar selectivity whether effective targets were viewed in
isolation or encountered in the course of exploring complex scenes. In
addition, by embedding target stimuli in natural scenes, we could
examine the activity of these stimulus-selective cells during visual
search and at the time targets were fixated and identified. We found
that, during exploration, neuronal activation sometimes began shortly
before effective targets were fixated, but only if the target was the
goal of the next fixation. Furthermore, we found that the magnitude of
this early activation varied inversely with reaction time, indicating
that perceptual information was integrated across fixations to
facilitate recognition. The behavior of these visually selective cells
suggests that they contribute to the process of noticing familiar
objects in the real world.
Key words:
natural scenes; object recognition; visual search; inferotemporal cortex; perceptual integration; saccadic eye movements; visual attention; monkey
Copyright © 2001 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/01/2141340-11$05.00/0
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