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End stopping in V1 is sensitive to contrast

Nature Neuroscience volume 9, pages 697–702 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Common situations that result in different perceptions of grouping and border ownership, such as shadows and occlusion, have distinct sign-of-contrast relationships at their edge-crossing junctions. Here we report a property of end stopping in V1 that distinguishes among different sign-of-contrast situations, thereby obviating the need for explicit junction detectors. We show that the inhibitory effect of the end zones in end-stopped cells is highly selective for the relative sign of contrast between the central activating stimulus and stimuli presented at the end zones. Conversely, the facilitatory effect of end zones in length-summing cells is not selective for the relative sign of contrast between the central activating stimulus and stimuli presented at the end zones. This finding indicates that end stopping belongs in the category of cortical computations that are selective for sign of contrast, such as direction selectivity and disparity selectivity, but length summation does not.

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Figure 1: Sign of contrast along contour discontinuities drives border ownership and surface stratification.
Figure 2: Sign-of-contrast selectivity of end stopping and length summation.
Figure 3: Population results for the end-zone properties of end-stopped and length-summing cells.
Figure 4: Stimulus configuration for sparse-noise reverse-correlation mapping of end-stopped and length-summing effects.
Figure 5: Paired-bar interaction maps for three end-stopped cells.
Figure 6: Paired-bar interaction maps for three length-summing cells.
Figure 7: Time courses of first-order responses and second-order interactions in the end zones and the side bands.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Freeman for developing computer programs; T. Chuprina for technical assistance; R. Rajimehr for helpful input; C. Libedinsky for discussion; and D. Tsao for an analysis framework. This work was supported by a grant from the National Eye Institute (EY13135).

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  1. Department of Neurobiology, WAB 232, Harvard Medical School, 220 Longwood Avenue, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Arash Yazdanbakhsh & Margaret S Livingstone

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  1. Arash Yazdanbakhsh
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Correspondence to Arash Yazdanbakhsh.

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Yazdanbakhsh, A., Livingstone, M. End stopping in V1 is sensitive to contrast. Nat Neurosci 9, 697–702 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1693

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