Sparsely distributed contours dominate extra-striate responses to complex scenes.

ABSTRACT: The human visual system exploits redundancy in natural scenes to derive useful information. Such redundancy is frequently associated with either contours or textures within images. In this study we use fMRI to evaluate how the total amount of contrast-energy contained in contours and textures within natural images affect responses in visual cortex. We used both the entire natural image and parts of it containing predominantly contour or texture information. We modified these natural images in order to match other image properties that are known to affect cortical responses as closely as possible. These modified natural images, i.e. pseudo-natural images, remain highly recognizable. We also used synthetic images without recognizable content but with closely matched image properties. We repo

SUBMITTER: Dumoulin SO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2572731 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature