PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Bruno A Olshausen

Publications and source records attributed to Bruno A Olshausen.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2003

Timecourse of neural signatures of object recognition.

How long does it take for the human visual system to recognize objects? This issue is important for understanding visual cortical function as it places constraints on models of the information processing underlying recognition. We designed a series of event-related potential (ERP) experiments to measure the timecourse of electrophysiological correlates of object recognition. We find two distinct types of components in the ERP recorded during categorization of natural images. One is an early presentation-locked signal arising around 135 ms that is present when there are low-level feature differences between images. The other is a later, recognition-related component arising between 150-300 ms. Unlike the early component, the latency of the later component covaries with the subsequent reaction time. In contrast to previous studies suggesting that the early, presentation-locked component of neural activity is correlated to recognition, these results imply that the neural signatures of recognition have a substantially later and variable time of onset.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Spontaneous activity of morphologically identified ganglion cells in the developing ferret retina.

Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings were made from morphologically identified ganglion cells in the intact retina of developing ferrets. As early as 3 d after birth, all ganglion cells exhibited bursts of spontaneous activity, with the interval between bursts gradually decreasing with maturity. By 2 weeks after birth, ganglion cells could be morphologically differentiated into three major classes (alpha, beta, and gamma), and at this time each cell class was characterized by a distinct pattern of spontaneous activity. Dual patch-clamp recordings from pairs of neighboring cells revealed that cells of all morphological classes burst in a coordinated manner, regardless of cell type. These observations suggest that a common mechanism underlies the bursting patterns exhibited by all ganglion cell classes, and that class-specific firing patterns emerge coincident with retinal ganglion cell morphological differentiation.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed2003

Processing shape, motion and three-dimensional shape-from-motion in the human cortex.

Shape and motion are complementary visual features and each appears to be processed in unique cortical areas. However, object motion is a powerful cue for the perception of three-dimensional (3-D) shape, implying that the two types of information--motion and form--are well integrated. We conducted a series of fMRI experiments aimed at identifying the brain regions involved in inferring 3-D shape from motion cues. For each subject, we identified regions in occipital-temporal cortex that were activated when perceiving: (i) motion in unstructured random-dot patterns, (ii) 2-D and 3-D line drawing shapes, and (iii) 3-D shapes defined by motion cues (shape-from-motion, SFM). We found closely adjacent areas in the lateral occipital region activated by random motion and line-drawing shapes. In addition, we found that the SFM stimuli produced a greater MRI signal in only one of the areas identified with the random motion and line-drawing stimuli: the superior lateral occipital (SLO) region. High-resolution analysis showed that SFM objects and line drawings were processed in separate but adjacent sub-regions in SLO, suggesting that SLO codes object shape but retains topographic segregation based on shape cues. Expanding the analysis to the entire cortex identified a parietal area that had overlapping activation for both SFM and line drawings and increased MRI signal for 3-D versus 2-D shapes, suggesting this area is important for processing shape information.

Brain Mapping↗
PubMed2002

Shape perception reduces activity in human primary visual cortex.

Visual perception involves the grouping of individual elements into coherent patterns that reduce the descriptive complexity of a visual scene. The physiological basis of this perceptual simplification remains poorly understood. We used functional MRI to measure activity in a higher object processing area, the lateral occipital complex, and in primary visual cortex in response to visual elements that were either grouped into objects or randomly arranged. We observed significant activity increases in the lateral occipital complex and concurrent reductions of activity in primary visual cortex when elements formed coherent shapes, suggesting that activity in early visual areas is reduced as a result of grouping processes performed in higher areas. These findings are consistent with predictive coding models of vision that postulate that inferences of high-level areas are subtracted from incoming sensory information in lower areas through cortical feedback.

Brain Mapping↗