NEURAL CODING OF VISUAL STIMULI

我们记录了初级视皮层中单个神经元的活动。 (视觉加工的第一皮层阶段)和颞叶下部 大脑皮层(大脑皮层的最后阶段)，以研究潜在的机制 视觉感知。我们知道神经元反应同时携带 几条不同的信息。神经元开始放电的时间 模式，即延迟，是一个代码，它指示 模式可以看到，射击的强度，反应 力量，是一种指示模式是什么的代码。一个组织的每个成员 用单电极同时记录的神经元对 给定的皮质视觉区域具有独立于 其他的。理论分析表明，这些神经元具有 如果大脑皮层发育到局部 为了将信息的损失降到最低，已经发展了一组神经元 在视觉处理过程中。综合所有这些发现， 我们认为视觉系统发送的信息描述了 刺激物作为复杂的、完整的物体，来自最早的皮质阶段， 并且每个神经元提供对刺激的独立描述 被观看。我们现在知道，低级时空的反应 神经元编码关于刺激与先入为主的刺激匹配程度的信息 刺激类型的模板，即使当刺激被视觉遮挡时 噪音。我们认为，传统的分层处理观点 应进行修改，以强调要素是专门组合的 在处理序列的早期部分，并由 处理序列的后续部分。

We recorded the activity of single neurons in the primary visual cortex (the first cortical stage of visual processing) and inferior temporal cortex (the last cortical stage), to study the mechanisms underlying visual perception. We know that neuronal responses simultaneously carry several different messages. The time the neurons start firing when a pattern is presented, the latency, is a code indicating how easily the pattern can be seen, and the intensity of the firing, the response strength, is a code indicating what the pattern is. Each member of a neuronal pair recorded from simultaneously with a single electrode in a given cortical visual area has responses that are independent of the other. A theoretical analysis shows that these neurons have the properties that would be expected if the cortex developed so that local groups of neurons had developed to minimize the loss of information during visual processing. Based on all of these findings taken together, we suggest that the visual system is sending messages that describe stimuli as complex, integrated objects from the earliest cortical stages, and that each neuron provides an independent description of the stimulus being viewed. We now know that the responses of inferior temporal neurons encode information about how well a stimulus fits a preconceived template of stimulus type, even when the stimulus is obscured by visual noise. We suggest that the traditional view of hierarchical processing should be modified to emphasize that features are combined specifically in the early parts of the processing sequence, and generalized by the later parts of the processing sequence.