Document Detail


"Brain-reading" of perceived colors reveals a feature mixing mechanism underlying perceptual filling-in in cortical area V1.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  20087841     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
Visual filling-in occurs when a retinally stabilized object undergoes perceptual fading. As the term "filling-in" implies, it is commonly believed that information about the apparently vanished object is lost and replaced solely by information arising from the surrounding background. Here we report multivoxel pattern analysis fMRI data that challenge this long-held belief. When subjects view blue disks on a red background while fixating, the stimulus and background appear to turn a uniform purple upon perceptual fading, suggesting that a feature mixing mechanism may underlie color filling-in. We find that ensemble fMRI signals in retinotopic visual areas reliably predict (i) which of three colors a subject reports seeing; (ii) whether a subject is in a perceptually filled-in state or not; and (iii) furthermore, while subjects are in the perceptual state of filling-in, the BOLD signal activation pattern in the sub-areas of V1 corresponding to the location of the blue disks behaves as if subjects are in fact viewing a perceptually mixed color (purple), rather than the color of the disks (blue) or the color of the background (red). These results imply that the mechanism of filling-in in stimuli in which figure and background surfaces are equated is a process of "feature mixing", not "feature replacement". These data indicate that feature mixing may involve cortical areas as early as V1.
Authors:
Po-Jang Hsieh; Peter U Tse
Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Human brain mapping     Volume:  31     ISSN:  1097-0193     ISO Abbreviation:  Hum Brain Mapp     Publication Date:  2010 Sep 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2010-09-14     Completed Date:  2011-01-03     Revised Date:  -    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  9419065     Medline TA:  Hum Brain Mapp     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  1395-407     Citation Subset:  IM    
Copyright Information:
Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 46-4141, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. pjh@mit.edu
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Adult
Brain Mapping*
Color Perception / physiology*
Female
Humans
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Visual Cortex / physiology*

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