PARALLEL INFORMATION PROCESSING OF THE VISUAL SYSTEM

我们未来五年的研究重点将是确定纹外视皮层区域的功能以及其中的神经元如何执行编码操作。 我们对恒河猴正在进行的研究表明，纹外皮质区并没有像以前所认为的那样，进化成单独分析视觉的不同基本方面，如颜色、深度、运动、形式和纹理。 相反，更多的纹外区域参与了比我们想象的更高层次的分析。 这些区域共同处理几个视觉属性，并且部分地进化为促进三维空间中的对象识别，并且当对象被部分遮挡或在各种照明条件下从不同视角看到时识别对象。 在记忆中学习和储存视觉对象的能力是这个过程的重要组成部分。 为了验证这些假设，我们计划在我们的研究中应用三种实验程序：（1）用单个和多个电极记录以使用以各种方式转换的三维刺激来评估纹外区域中的神经元的响应特性，（2）植入电极阵列的慢性记录，以确定在学习新视觉对象的过程中细胞的响应特性如何改变，和（3）在去除选定的纹外皮质区后，在广泛的测试中评估动物的视觉能力。 这项工作具有重要的临床意义，因为它将用于表征各种视觉皮层区域的功能。

The focus of our research for the next five years will be to determine the functions of extrastriate visual cortical areas and how the neurons therein perform coding operations. Our ongoing work on rhesus monkeys suggests that extrastriate cortical areas did not evolve, as had been previously suggested, to separately analyze different basic aspects of vision such as color, depth, motion, form, and texture. Instead, many more extrastriate areas engage in higher-level analyses than had been thought. These areas co-process several visual attributes and have, in part, evolved to facilitate object recognition in three dimensional space and to recognize objects when they are partially occluded or are seen from different perspectives under various conditions of illumination. The ability to learn and store visual objects in memory is an essential part of this process. To test these hypotheses we plan to apply three kinds of experimental procedures in our research: (1) recordings with single and multiple electrodes to assess the response properties of neurons in extrastriate areas using three dimensional stimuli that are transformed in various ways, (2) chronic recordings with implanted electrode arrays to determine how the response properties of cells are altered during the process of learning new visual objects, and (3) assessment of the visual capacities of animals on a broad range of tests after the removal of selected extrastriate cortical areas. The proposed work has important clinical relevance as it will serve characterize the functions of various visual cortical areas.