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Functional organization for color and orientation in macaque V4

Nature Neuroscience volume 13, pages 1542–1548 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Visual area V4 in the macaque monkey is a cortical area that is strongly involved in color and shape perception. However, fundamental questions about V4 are still debated. V4 was initially characterized as a color-processing area, but subsequent studies revealed that it contains a diverse complement of cells, including those with preference for color, orientation, disparity and higher-order feature preferences. This has led to disputes and uncertainty about the role of V4 in vision. Using intrinsic signal optical imaging methods in awake, behaving monkeys, we found that different feature preferences are functionally organized in V4. Optical images revealed that regions with preferential response to color were largely separate from orientation-selective regions. Our results help to resolve long-standing controversies regarding functional diversity and retinotopy in V4 and indicate the presence of spatially biased distribution of featural representation in V4 in the ventral visual pathway.

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Figure 1: Examples of time course of stimulus-evoked reflectance change in V4.
Figure 2: Functional maps of color and orientation sensitivity in foveal V4.
Figure 3: Functional maps of color and orientation sensitivity in parafoveal V4.
Figure 4: Overall spatial pattern of modulation by the stimulus at different locations in the visual field.
Figure 5: Functional maps of orientation preference in V4.
Figure 6: Functional map of hue preference in V4.
Figure 7: Luminance invariance in responses of hue-preferring region.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J.H. Kaas and G. Chen for comments on the manuscript and Y. Chu for technical assistance. This work was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center and Vanderbilt University Center for Integrative & Cognitive Neuroscience to A.W.R.

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  1. Haidong D Lu

    Present address: Present address: Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Hisashi Tanigawa, Haidong D Lu & Anna W Roe

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Contributions

H.T. and A.W.R. designed the experiments. H.T. performed the experiments and analyzed the data. H.L. assisted H.T. with experimental procedures. H.T. and A.W.R. discussed the results and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Anna W Roe.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–7, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Note (PDF 2518 kb)

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Tanigawa, H., Lu, H. & Roe, A. Functional organization for color and orientation in macaque V4. Nat Neurosci 13, 1542–1548 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2676

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