Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 38, Issue 9, Pages 2294-2303Publisher
SOC NEUROSCIENCE
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2717-17.2018
Keywords
population receptive field modeling; retinotopy; visual cortex
Categories
Funding
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH [ZIAMH002909, ZICMH002888] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
A fundamental feature of cortical visual processing is the separation of visual processing for the upper and lower visual fields. In early visual cortex (EVC), the upper visual field is processed ventrally, with the lower visual field processed dorsally. This distinction persists into several category-selective regions of occipitotemporal cortex, with ventral and lateral scene-, face-, and object-selective regions biased for the upper and lower visual fields, respectively. Here, using an elliptical population receptive field (pRF) model, we systematically tested the sampling of visual space within ventral and dorsal divisions of human EVC in both male and female participants. We found that (1) pRFs tend to be elliptical and oriented toward the fovea with distinct angular distributions for ventral and dorsal divisions of EVC, potentially reflecting a radial bias; and (2) pRFs in ventral areas were larger (similar to 1.5X) and more elliptical (similar to 1.2X) than those in dorsal areas. These differences potentially reflect a tendency for receptive fields in ventral temporal cortex to overlap the fovea with less emphasis on precise localization and isotropic representation of space compared with dorsal areas. Collectively, these findings suggest that ventral and dorsal divisions of EVC sample visual space differently, likely contributing to and/or stemming from the functional differentiation of visual processing observed in higher-level regions of the ventral and dorsal cortical visual pathways.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available