{Reference Type}: Journal Article
{Title}: Population coding for figure-ground texture segregation in macaque V1 and V4.
{Author}: Zhao XN;Dong XS;Jiang DQ;Wu S;Tang SM;Yu C;
{Journal}: Prog Neurobiol
{Volume}: 240
{Issue}: 0
{Year}: 2024 Jul 4
{Factor}: 10.885
{DOI}: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2024.102655
{Abstract}: Object recognition often involves the brain segregating objects from their surroundings. Neurophysiological studies of figure-ground texture segregation have yielded inconsistent results, particularly on whether V1 neurons can perform figure-ground texture segregation or just detect texture borders. To address this issue from a population perspective, we utilized two-photon calcium imaging to simultaneously record the responses of large samples of V1 and V4 neurons to figure-ground texture stimuli in awake, fixating macaques. The average response changes indicate that V1 neurons mainly detect texture borders, while V4 neurons are involved in figure-ground segregation. However, population analysis (SVM decoding of PCA-transformed neuronal responses) reveal that V1 neurons not only detect figure-ground borders, but also contribute to figure-ground texture segregation, although requiring substantially more principal components than V4 neurons to reach a 75 % decoding accuracy. Individually, V1/V4 neurons showing larger (negative/positive) figure-ground response differences contribute more to figure-ground segregation. But for V1 neurons, the contribution becomes significant only when many principal components are considered. We conclude that V1 neurons participate in figure-ground segregation primarily by defining the figure borders, and the poorly structured figure-ground information V1 neurons carry could be further utilized by V4 neurons to accomplish figure-ground segregation.