Dynamics of population coding for object views following object discrimination training.pdfVIP

Neuroscience 330 (2016) 109–120 DYNAMICS OF POPULATION CODING FOR OBJECT VIEWS FOLLOWING OBJECT DISCRIMINATION TRAINING REONA YAMAGUCHI, a JUN-YA OKAMURA a AND GANG WANG a,b* a Department of Information Science and Biomedical Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima 890-0065, Japan b Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, Weifang Medical University, Shandong, China Abstract—We have previously demonstrated that inferotemporal neurons respond to objects viewed from a range of angles, even without any prior experience in learning the associations among the views. Several models have been proposed to explain object recognition across disparate views. However, direct neuronal evidence is rare. In the present study, we focused on the response similarity of a population of inferotemporal cells to object views, following di?erent prior experiences. Two monkeys were subjected to a task in which object discrimination across views was required. We found signi?cantly higher neural response similarity to 30° separated views, 190 ms after object image presentation, than without any prior discrimination experience across views. The time period over which the similarity was signi?cant began and endured similarly for 60° separated views at 190–850 ms. For 90° separated views, the time period over which the similarity was signi?cant was shorter and started later, at 230–550 ms. The results demonstrate the dynamics of cell population activity and suggest a possible explanation for object recognition across disparate views. ó 2016 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Key words: monkey inferotemporal cortex, object recognition, view invariance, population coding. INTRODUCTION Our visual system can discriminate one object from others despite changes in viewing angle. Rotation in depth is one of the most di?cult and challenging problems since features can appear drastically di?erent from one view to another (Tarr and Bu¨ lth