The spatial representation in the human ventral object-related areas (i.e., the lateral occipital complex [LOC]) is currently unknown. It seems plausible, however, that it would diverge from the strict retinotopic mapping (characteristic of V1) to a more invariant coordinate frame, thereby allowing for reliable object recognition in the face of eye, head, or body movement. To study this, we compared the fMRI activation in LOC when object displacement was limited to either the retina or the screen by manipulating eye position and object locations. We found clear adaptation in LOC when the object's screen position was fixed, regardless of the object's retinal position. Furthermore, we found significantly greater activation in LOC in the hemisphere contralateral to the object's screen position, although the visual task was constructed in a way that the objects were present equally often on each of the 2 retinal hemifields. Together, these results indicate that a sizeable fraction of the neurons in LOC may have head-based receptive fields. Such an extraretinal representation may be useful for maintenance of object coherence across saccadic eye movements, which are an integral part of natural vision.
Visual object recognition develops during the first years of life. But what if one is deprived of vision during early post-natal development? Shape information is extracted using both low-level cues (e.g., intensity- or color-based contours) and more complex algorithms that are largely based on inference assumptions (e.g., illumination is from above, objects are often partially occluded). Previous studies, testing visual acuity using a 2D shape-identification task (Lea symbols), indicate that contour-based shape recognition can improve with visual experience, even after years of visual deprivation from birth. We hypothesized that this may generalize to other low-level cues (shape, size, and color), but not to mid-level functions (e.g., 3D shape from shading) that might require prior visual knowledge. To that end, we studied a unique group of subjects in Ethiopia that suffered from an early manifestation of dense bilateral cataracts and were surgically treated only years later. Our results suggest that the newly sighted rapidly acquire the ability to recognize an odd element within an array, on the basis of color, size, or shape differences. However, they are generally unable to find the odd shape on the basis of illusory contours, shading, or occlusion relationships. Little recovery of these mid-level functions is seen within 1 year post-operation. We find that visual performance using low-level cues is relatively robust to prolonged deprivation from birth. However, the use of pictorial depth cues to infer 3D structure from the 2D retinal image is highly susceptible to early and prolonged visual deprivation.
Development of multisensory integration following prolonged early-onset visual deprivationHighlights d Congenitally blind individuals regaining sight late acquire multisensory integration abilities d The ability to integrate vision and touch develops quickly after surgery d Some individuals reach optimal integration levels within years to benefit perception d The development is based on experience and depends on post-surgical visual acuity
Viewing a hand action performed by another person facilitates a response-compatible action and slows a response-incompatible one, even when the viewed action is irrelevant to the task. This automatic imitation effect is taken as the clearest evidence for a direct mapping between action viewing and motor performance. But there is an ongoing debate whether this effect is innate or experience dependent. We tackled this issue by studying a unique group of newly sighted children who suffered from dense bilateral cataracts from early infancy and were surgically treated only years later. The newly sighted children were less affected by viewing task-irrelevant actions than were control children, even 2 years after the cataract-removal surgery. This strongly suggests that visually guided motor experience is necessary for the development of automatic imitation. At the very least, our results indicate that if imitation is based on innate mechanisms, these are clearly susceptible to long periods of visual deprivation.
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