Faculty Articles
Receptive-field subfields of V2 neurons in macaque monkey are adult-like near birth
ISSN
0270-6474
Publication Date
2-6-2013
Abstract
Infant primates can discriminate texture-defined form despite their relatively low visual acuity. The neuronal mechanisms underlying this remarkable visual capacity of infants have not been studied in nonhuman primates. Since many V2 neurons in adult monkeys can extract the local features in complex stimuli that are required for form vision, we used two-dimensional dynamic noise stimuli and local spectral reverse correlation (LSRC) to measure whether the spatial map of receptive-field subfields in individual V2 neurons is sufficiently mature near birth to capture local features. As in adults, most V2 neurons in 4-week-old monkeys showed a relatively high degree of homogeneity in the spatial matrix of facilitatory subfields. However, about 25% of V2 neurons had the subfield map where the neighboring facilitatory subfields substantially differed in their preferred orientations and spatial frequencies. Over 80% of V2 neurons in both infants and adults had ‘tuned’ suppressive profiles in their subfield maps that could alter the tuning properties of facilitatory profiles. The differences in the preferred orientations between facilitatory and suppressive profiles were relatively large but extended over a broad range. Response immaturities in infants were mild; the overall strength of facilitatory subfield responses was lower than that in adults and the optimal correlation delay (‘latency’) was longer in 4-week-old infants. These results suggest that as early as 4 weeks of age, the spatial receptive-field structure of V2 neurons is as complex as in adults and the ability of V2 neurons to compare local features of neighboring stimulus elements is nearly adult like.
DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4377-12.2013
Volume
33
Issue
6
First Page
2639
Last Page
2649
Disciplines
Optometry
NSUWorks Citation
Zhang, Bin; Tao, Xiaofeng; Shen, Guofu; Smith, Earl L. III; and Chino, Yuzo M., "Receptive-field subfields of V2 neurons in macaque monkey are adult-like near birth" (2013). Faculty Articles. 26.
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hpd_opt_facarticles/26
