Visual information is initially represented as 2D images on the retina, but our brains are able to transform this input to perceive our rich 3D environment. While many studies have explored 2D spatial representations or depth perception in isolation, it remains unknown if or how these processes interact in human visual cortex. Here we used functional MRI and multi-voxel pattern analysis to investigate the relationship between 2D location and position-in-depth information. We stimulated different 3D locations in a blocked design: each location was defined by horizontal, vertical, and depth position. Participants remained fixated at the center of the screen while passively viewing the peripheral stimuli with red/green anaglyph glasses. Our results revealed a widespread, systematic transition throughout visual cortex. As expected, 2D location information (horizontal and vertical) could be strongly decoded in early visual areas, with reduced decoding higher along the visual hierarchy, consistent with known changes in receptive field sizes. Critically, we found that the decoding of position-in-depth information tracked inversely with the 2D location pattern, with the magnitude of depth decoding gradually increasing from intermediate to higher visual and category regions. Representations of 2D location information became increasingly location-tolerant in later areas, where depth information was also tolerant to changes in 2D location. We propose that spatial representations gradually transition from 2D-dominant to balanced 3D (2D and depth) along the visual hierarchy.

In visual search, target detection times are relatively insensitive to set size when targets and distractors differ on a single feature dimension. Search can be confined to only those elements sharing a single feature, such as color (Egeth, Virzi, & Garbart, 1984). These findings have been taken as evidence that elementary feature dimensions support a parallel segmentation of a scene into discrete sets of items. Here we explored if relative depth (signaled by binocular disparity) could support a similar parallel segmentation by examining the effects of distributing distracting elements across two depth planes. Three important empirical findings emerged. First, when the target was a feature singleton on the target depth plane, but a conjunction search among distractors on the nontarget plane, search efficiency increased compared to a single depth plane. Second, benefits of segmentation in depth were only observed when the target depth plane was known in advance. Third, no benefit of segmentation in depth was observed when both planes required a conjunction search, even with prior knowledge of the target depth plane. Overall, the benefit of distributing the elements of a search set across two depth planes was observed only when the two planes differed both in binocular disparity and in the elementary feature composition of individual elements. We conclude that segmentation of the search array into two depth planes can facilitate visual search, but unlike color or other elementary properties, does not provide an automatic, preattentive segmentation.

A fundamental aspect of human visual perception is the ability to recognize and locate objects in the environment. Importantly, our environment is predominantly three-dimensional (3D), but while there is considerable research exploring the binding of object features and location, it is unknown how depth information interacts with features in the object binding process. A recent paradigm called the spatial congruency bias demonstrated that 2D location is fundamentally bound to object features (Golomb, Kupitz, & Thiemann, 2014), such that irrelevant location information biases judgments of object features, but irrelevant feature information does not bias judgments of location or other features. Here, using the spatial congruency bias paradigm, we asked whether depth is processed as another type of location, or more like other features. We initially found that depth cued by binocular disparity biased judgments of object color. However, this result seemed to be driven more by the disparity differences than the depth percept: Depth cued by occlusion and size did not bias color judgments, whereas vertical disparity information (with no depth percept) did bias color judgments. Our results suggest that despite the 3D nature of our visual environment, only 2D location information – not position-in-depth – seems to be automatically bound to object features, with depth information processed more similarly to other features than to 2D location.

Many activities necessitate the deployment of attention to specific distances and directions in our threedimensional (3D) environment. However, most research on how attention is deployed is conducted with two dimensional (2D) computer displays, leaving a large gap in our understanding about the deployment of attention in 3D space. We report how each of four parameters of 3D visual space influence visual search: 3D display volume, distance in depth, number of depth planes, and relative target position in depth. Using a search task, we find that visual search performance depends on 3D volume, relative target position in depth, and number of depth planes. Our results demonstrate an asymmetrical preference for targets in the front of a display unique to 3D search and show that arranging items into more depth planes reduces search efficiency. Consistent with research using 2D displays, we found slower response times to find targets in displays with larger 3D volumes compared with smaller 3D volumes. Finally, in contrast to the importance of target depth relative to other distractors, target depth relative to the fixation point did not affect response times or search efficiency.

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