CORTICAL MICROSTIMULATION INFLUENCES PERCEPTUAL JUDGMENTS OF MOTION DIRECTION
CORTICAL MICROSTIMULATION INFLUENCES PERCEPTUAL JUDGMENTS OF MOTION DIRECTION
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DOI：
10.1038/346174a0
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发表时间：
1990-07-12
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
NEWSOME, WT
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
SALZMAN, CD;BRITTEN, KH;NEWSOME, WT
视觉皮层中的神经元选择性地对视觉场景的感知显著特征做出反应，例如移动物体的方向和速度、局部轮廓的方向或视觉图案的颜色或相对深度。人们通常认为，大脑从这些神经元的选择性反应中编码的信息中构建其对视觉场景的感知。我们现在已经通过测量修改生理特征神经元的放电频率对心理物理表现的影响来直接检验这一假设。我们要求恒河猴在视觉显示中报告运动方向，同时我们电刺激中颞叶视区(MT，或V5)的方向选择性神经元簇，这是一个在分析视觉运动信息1-8中起重要作用的纹外区。微刺激使动物对受刺激神经元编码的运动方向的判断产生偏差。这一结果表明，在神经元水平上测量的生理特性可能与知觉表现的特定方面存在因果关系。
NEURONS in the visual cortex respond selectively to perceptually salient features of the visual scene, such as the direction and speed of moving objects, the orientation of local contours, or the colour or relative depth of a visual pattern. It is commonly assumed that the brain constructs its percept of the visual scene from information encoded in the selective responses of such neurons. We have now tested this hypothesis directly by measuring the effect on psychophysical performance of modifying the firing rates of physiologically characterized neurons. We required rhesus monkeys to report the direction of motion in a visual display while we electrically stimulated clusters of directionally selective neurons in the middle temporal visual area (MT, or V5), an extrastriate area that plays a prominent role in the analysis of visual motion information1–8. Microstimulation biased the animals' judgements towards the direction of motion encoded by the stimulated neurons. This result indicates that physiological properties measured at the neuronal level can be causally related to a specific aspect of perceptual performance.