Partial Occlusion Modulates Contour-Based Shape Encoding in Primate Area V4

Past studies of shape coding in visual cortical area V4 have demonstrated that neurons can accurately represent isolated shapes in terms of their component contour features. However, rich natural scenes contain many partially occluded objects, which have accidental contours at the junction between the occluded and occluding objects. These contours do not represent the true shape of the occluded object and are known to be perceptually discounted. To discover whether V4 neurons differentially encode accidental contours, we studied the responses of single neurons in fixating monkeys to complex shapes and contextual stimuli presented either in isolation or adjoining each other to provide a percept of partial occlusion. Responses to preferred contours were suppressed when the adjoining context rendered those contours accidental. The observed suppression was reversed when the partial occlusion percept was compromised by introducing a small gap between the component stimuli. Control experiments demonstrated that these results likely depend on contour geometry at T-junctions and cannot be attributed to mechanisms based solely on local color/luminance contrast, spatial proximity of stimuli, or the spatial frequency content of images. Our findings provide novel insights into how occluded objects, which are fundamental to complex visual scenes, are encoded in area V4. They also raise the possibility that the weakened encoding of accidental contours at the junction between objects could mark the first step of image segmentation along the ventral visual pathway.