Paying attention to natural scenes in area V1.

ABSTRACT: Natural scene responses in the primary visual cortex are modulated simultaneously by attention and by contextual signals about scene statistics stored across the connectivity of the visual processing hierarchy. We hypothesized that attentional and contextual signals interact in V1 in a manner that primarily benefits the representation of natural stimuli, rich in high-order statistical structure. Recording from two macaques engaged in a spatial attention task, we found that attention enhanced the decodability of stimulus identity from population responses evoked by natural scenes, but not by synthetic stimuli lacking higher-order statistical regularities. Population analysis revealed that neuronal responses converged to a low-dimensional subspace only for natural stimuli. Critically, we det

SUBMITTER: Lazar A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10844823 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature