Contrast sensitivity in human visual areas and its relationship to object recognition

Galia Avidan, Michal Harel, Talma Hendler, Dafna Ben-Bashat, Ehud Zohary, Rafael Malach*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

190 Scopus citations

Abstract

An important characteristic of visual perception is the fact that object recognition is largely immune to changes in viewing conditions. This invariance is obtained within a sequence of ventral stream visual areas beginning in area V1 and ending in high order occipito-temporal object areas (the lateral occipital complex, LOC). Here we studied whether this transformation could be observed in the contrast response of these areas. Subjects were presented with line drawings of common objects and faces in five different contrast levels (0, 4, 6, 10, and 100%). Our results show that indeed there was a gradual trend of increasing contrast invariance moving from area V1, which manifested high sensitivity to contrast changes, to the LOC, which showed a significantly higher degree of invariance at suprathreshold contrasts (from 10 to 100%). The trend toward increased invariance could be observed for both face and object images; however, it was more complete for the face images, while object images still manifested substantial sensitivity to contrast changes. Control experiments ruled out the involvement of attention effects or hemodynamic "ceiling" in producing the contrast invariance. The transition from V1 to LOC was gradual with areas along the ventral stream becoming increasingly contrast-invariant. These results further stress the hierarchical and gradual nature of the transition from early retinotopic areas to high order ones, in the build-up of abstract object representations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3102-3116
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Neurophysiology
Volume87
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 2002
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Contrast sensitivity in human visual areas and its relationship to object recognition'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this