Vision: From Eye to Brain

(Chap 3, Part B)

Lecture 7

Jonathan Pillow
Sensation & Perception
(PSY 345 / NEU 325)
Princeton University, Spring 2015
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 more “channels”: spatial frequency channels

spatial frequency: the number of cycles of a grating per unit

of visual angle (usually specified in degrees)
• think of it as: # of bars per unit length

low frequency intermediate high frequency

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Why sine gratings?
• Provide useful decomposition of images

Technical term: Fourier decomposition

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Fourier decomposition
• mathematical decomposition of an image (or sound)
into sine waves.
reconstruction:
“image”
1 sine wave

2 sine waves

3 sine waves

4 sine waves

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 “Fourier Decomposition” theory of V1
claim: role of V1 is to do “Fourier decomposition”, i.e., break
images down into a sum of sine waves

• Summation of two spatial sine

waves
• any pattern can be broken
down into a sum of sine waves

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Fourier decomposition
• mathematical decomposition of an image (or sound)
into sine waves.

Original image High Frequencies Low Frequencies

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 original

low medium high

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Retinal Ganglion Cells: tuned to spatial frequency

Response of a ganglion
cell to sine gratings of
different frequencies

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The contrast sensitivity function

Human contrast sensitivity illustration of this sensitivity

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Image Illustrating Spatial Frequency Channels

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Image Illustrating Spatial Frequency Channels

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If it is hard to tell who this famous person is, try
squinting or defocusing

“Lincoln illusion” Harmon & Jules 1973

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“Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea, which at 30 meters
becomes the portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)”

- Salvador Dali (1976)

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“Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea, which at 30 meters
becomes the portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)”

- Salvador Dali (1976)

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lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN): one on each side of the brain
• this is where axons of retinal ganglion cells synapse

Organization:
• represents contralateral
visual field
• segregated into eye-
specific layers
• segregated into M and P
layers

Ipsilateral: Referring to
the same side of the
body
Contralateral:
Referring to the
opposite side of the
body
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 Primary Visual Cortex
• Striate cortex: known as primary visual cortex, or V1

• “Primary visual cortex” = first place in cortex where

visual information is processed

(Previous two stages: retina and LGN are pre-cortical)

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Receptive Fields: monocular vs. binocular

- LGN cells: responds to one eye or

the other, never both
LGN

V1

- V1 cells: can respond to input from both eyes

• By the time information gets to V1, inputs from both
eyes have been combined
(but V1 neurons still tend to have a preferred eye - they
spike more to input from one eye)
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Topography: mapping of objects in space onto the visual cortex

• contralateral representation
- each visual field (L/R) represented in
opposite hemisphere

• cortical magnification
- unequal representation of
fovea vs. periphery in cortex
- a misnomer, because
“magnification” already
present in retina

(that is, the amount of space in

cortex for each part of the
visual field is given by the
number of fibers coming in from
LGN)

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Acuity in V1

Visual acuity declines in an orderly fashion with

eccentricity—distance from the fovea (in deg)

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V1 receptive fields: elongated regions of space

Major change in representation:

• Circular receptive fields
(retina & LGN) replaced by
elongated “stripe”
receptive fields in cortex
• Has ~ 200 million cells!
• (vs. 1 million Retinal
Ganglion Cells)

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Orientation tuning:
• neurons in V1 respond more to bars of certain orientations
• response rate falls off with difference from preferred orientation

“preferred orientation”

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Receptive Fields in V1
Many cortical cells respond especially well to:
• Moving lines
• Bars
• Edges
• Gratings
• Direction of motion

Ocular dominance:
• Cells in V1 tend to have a “preferred eye”
(i.e., respond better to inputs from one eye than the other)

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Simple vs. Complex Cells

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Receptive Fields in V1
Cells in V1 respond best to bars of light rather than to spots of light
• “simple” cells: prefer bars of light, or prefer bars of dark
• “complex” cells: respond to both bars of light and dark

[Hubel & Weisel movie]

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Column: a vertical arrangement of neurons

• ocular dominance
• orientation column: column: for particular
for a particular location in
location in cortex, neurons
cortex, neurons have same
have same preferred eye
preferred orientation

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Hypercolumn - contains all possible columns

• Hypercolumn: 1-mm block

of V1 containing “all the
machinery necessary to look
after everything the visual
cortex is responsible for, in a
certain small part of the visual
world” (Hubel, 1982

• Each hypercolumn contains a full set of columns

- has cells responding to every possible orientation, and
inputs from left right eyes
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 web demos
receptive fields
http://sites.sinauer.com/wolfe4e/wa03.04.html

columns
http://sites.sinauer.com/wolfe4e/wa03.05.html

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Adaptation

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Adaptation: the Psychologist’s Electrode

“tilt after-effect”

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Adaptation: the Psychologist’s Electrode

“tilt after-effect”

• perceptual illusion of
tilt, provided by
adapting to a pattern
of a given orientation

• supports idea that the

human visual system
contains individual
neurons selective for
different orientations

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Adaptation: the Psychologist’s Electrode

Adaptation: the diminishing response of a sense organ to

a sustained stimulus

• An important method for deactivating groups of

neurons without surgery

• Allows selective temporary “knock out” of group of

neurons by activating them strongly

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Effects of adaptation on population response and perception

Before Adaptation 0 degree stimulus

unadapted
population
resp to 0 deg

Stimulus presented =
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Effects of adaptation on population response and perception
Then adapt to 20º
Before Adaptation

unadapted
population
resp to 0 deg

Stimulus presented =
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Selective adaptation alters neural responses and perception

After Adaptation perceptual effect of

adaptation is repulsion
away from the adapter

Stimulus presented =
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Selective Adaptation: The Psychologist’s Electrode

Selective adaptation for spatial frequency: Evidence that

human visual system contains neurons selective for spatial
frequency

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Adaptation that is specific to spatial frequency (SF)
1. adapt 2. test

3. percept

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Adaptation that is specific to spatial frequency (SF)
1. adapt 2. test

3. percept

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Adaptation that is specific to spatial frequency (SF)
1. adapt 2. test

3. percept

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Adaptation that is specific to spatial frequency AND orientation
1. adapt 2. test

3. No adaptive percept

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Adaptation that is specific to spatial frequency AND orientation
1. adapt 2. test

3. No adaptive percept

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Adaptation that is specific to spatial frequency AND orientation
1. adapt 2. test

3. No adaptive percept

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Selective Adaptation: The Psychologist’s Electrode

Orthodox viewpoint:
• If you can observe a particular type of adaptive after-effect,
there is a certain neuron in the brain that is selective (or
tuned) for that property

THUS (for example):

There are no neurons tuned for spatial frequency across all

orientations, because adaptation is orientation specific.

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Selective Adaptation: The Psychologist’s Electrode

adapting
spatial freq

contrast sensitivity after threshold increases near width of “channels”

adaptation to a sine the adapted frequency that contribute to
wave with a frequency contrast sensitivity
of 7 cycles/degree.

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Selective Adaptation: The Psychologist’s Electrode

adapting
spatial freq

Therefore:
• adaptation reveals separate channels devoted to orientation
and spatial frequencies
• width of adaptive effect reveals the width of the channel

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The Development of Spatial Vision
• how can you study the vision of infants who can’t yet speak?

1. preferential-looking paradigm
- infants prefer to look at more complex stimuli

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The Development of Spatial Vision
• how can you study the vision of infants who can’t yet speak?

2. visually evoked potentials (VEP)

- measure brain’s electrical activity directly

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The Development of Spatial Vision

young children: not very sensitive to high spatial frequencies

• Visual system is still developing

! Cones and rods are still developing and taking final
shape
! Retinal ganglion cells are still migrating and growing
connections with the fovea
! The fovea itself has not fully developed until about 4
years of age

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 Summary
• early visual pathway: retina -> LGN -> V1
• “contralateral” representations in visual pathway
• visual acuity (vs. sensitivity)
• spatial frequency channels
• Fourier analysis
• spatial frequency sensitivity & tuning
• V1 receptive fields, orientation tuning
• Hubel & Weisel experiments
• simple vs. complex cells
• cortical magnification
• cortical columns, hypercolumns
• adaptation
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