Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Representing whole objects: temporal neurons learn to play their parts

Nature Neuroscience volume 5, pages 1105–1106 (2002)Cite this article

Shape-selective neurons in inferotemporal cortex could carry information about either component parts or whole objects. A new paper now reports that whole-object shape selectivity is increased for stimuli that monkeys have learned to recognize in a discrimination task.

How do you encode a very large number of items with a limited set of signals? That is the task facing the visual system, which must represent the virtual infinity of real-world objects with a finite number of neurons. The answer, of course, is to use the signals in different combinations. For example, 26 letters of the alphabet can be combined in different ways to represent millions of words. In neuroscience, this is known as 'distributed coding' because the representation of a stimulus is distributed across a population of neurons, instead of being localized to a single neuron. An intuitive type of distributed coding for object vision is 'representation by parts'1,2,3. This is the idea that the 'shape alphabet' corresponds to commonly encountered object components. Consistent with this theory, many neurons in the ventral (object) pathway of visual cortex show tuning for object parts such as contour fragments4, surface features5 and simple geometric elements5,6. Such tuning is graded, not all-or-nothing, so signals for shape elements are analog rather than discrete. At the population level, an entire object could be represented by multiple signals for its component parts7.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of the Baker et al. experiment10.

References

  1. Marr, D. & Nishihara, H.K. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 200, 269–294 (1978).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Biederman, I. Psychol. Rev. 94, 115–147 (1987).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Hoffman, D.D. & Richards, W.A. Cognition 18, 65–96 (1984).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Pasupathy, A. & Connor, C.E. J. Neurophysiol. 86, 2505–2519 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Tanaka, K., Saito, H., Fukada, Y. & Moriya, M. J. Neurophysiol. 66, 170–189 (1991).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Tsunoda, K., Yamane, Y., Nishizaki, M. & Tanifuji, M. Nat. Neurosci. 4, 832–838 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Pasupathy, A. & Connor, C.E. Nat. Neurosci. (in press).

  8. Poggio, T. & Edelman, S. Nature 343, 263–266 (1990).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Edelman, S. Representation and Recognition in Vision (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Baker, C.I., Behrmann, M. & Olson, C.R. Nat. Neurosci. 5, 1210–1216 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Miyashita, Y. Nature 335, 817–820 (1988).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Logothetis, N.K. & Pauls, J. Cereb. Cortex 5, 270–288 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Booth, M.C. & Rolls, E.T. Cereb. Cortex 8, 510–523 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Kobatake, E., Wang, G. & Tanaka, K. J. Neurophysiol. 80, 324–330 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Sigala, N. & Logothetis, N.K. Nature 415, 318–320 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuroscience and the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA

    Charles E. Connor

Authors
  1. Charles E. Connor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Connor, C. Representing whole objects: temporal neurons learn to play their parts. Nat Neurosci 5, 1105–1106 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1102-1105

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1102-1105

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing