One picture is worth at least a million neurons

How many neurons participate in the representation of a single visual image? Answering this question is critical for constraining biologically inspired models of object recognition, which vary greatly in their assumptions from few grandmother cells [1] to numerous neurons in widely distributed networks [2]. Functional imaging techniques, such as fMRI, provide an opportunity to explore this issue, since they allow the simultaneous detection of the entire neuronal population responding to each stimulus. Several studies [3-6] have shown that fMRI BOLD signal is approximately proportional to neuronal activity. However, since it provides an indirect measure of this activity, obtaining a realistic estimate of the number of activated neurons requires several intervening steps. Here, we used the extensive knowledge of primate Vi to yield a conservative estimate of the ratio between hemodynamic response and neuronal firing. This ratio was then used, in addition to several cautious assumptions, to assess the number of neurons responding to a single-object image in the entire visual cortex and particularly in object-related areas. Our results show that at least a million neurons in object-related cortex and about two hundred million neurons in the entire visual cortex are involved in the representation of a single-object image.