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Activity in primary visual cortex predicts performance in a visual detection task

Nature Neuroscience volume 3, pages 940–945 (2000)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 01 December 2000

Abstract

Visual attention can affect both neural activity and behavior in humans. To quantify possible links between the two, we measured activity in early visual cortex (V1, V2 and V3) during a challenging pattern-detection task. Activity was dominated by a large response that was independent of the presence or absence of the stimulus pattern. The measured activity quantitatively predicted the subject's pattern-detection performance: when activity was greater, the subject was more likely to correctly discern the presence or absence of the pattern. This stimulus-independent activity had several characteristics of visual attention, suggesting that attentional mechanisms modulate activity in early visual cortex, and that this attention-related activity strongly influences performance.

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Figure 1: Experimental protocol and typical result.
Figure 2: Trial-to-trial variability in V1 activity was highly predictive of behavioral performance in the threshold detection task.
Figure 3: Activity in extrastriate areas V2 and V3 predicted performance.
Figure 4: V1 activity was spatially selective.
Figure 5: Extrastriate activity was also spatially selective.
Figure 6: V1 activity depended on task difficulty.
Figure 7: Extrastriate activity also depended on task difficulty.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W.T. Newsome, B.A. Wandell and M. Carandini for comments. This research was supported by an NEI grant (R01-EY11794), a grant from the Human Frontier Science Program, and two NRSA postdoctoral research fellowships (F32-EY06899 and F32-EY06952).

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  1. Stanford University, Dept. of Psychology, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg. 420/400, Stanford, 94305-2130, California , USA

    David Ress, Benjamin T. Backus & David J. Heeger

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  1. David Ress
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Correspondence to David J. Heeger.

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Ress, D., Backus, B. & Heeger, D. Activity in primary visual cortex predicts performance in a visual detection task. Nat Neurosci 3, 940–945 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/78856

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