Functional Specialization of ON and OFF Cortical Pathways for Global-Slow and Local-Fast Vision.

ABSTRACT: Visual information is processed in the cortex by ON and OFF pathways that respond to light and dark stimuli. Responses to darks are stronger, faster, and driven by a larger number of cortical neurons than responses to lights. Here, we demonstrate that these light-dark cortical asymmetries reflect a functional specialization of ON and OFF pathways for different stimulus properties. We show that large long-lasting stimuli drive stronger cortical responses when they are light, whereas small fast stimuli drive stronger cortical responses when they are dark. Moreover, we show that these light-dark asymmetries are preserved under a wide variety of luminance conditions that range from photopic to low mesopic light. Our results suggest that ON and OFF pathways extract different spatiotemporal info

SUBMITTER: Mazade R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6561493 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature