Journal Article

The spatial transformation of color in the primary visual cortex of the macaque monkey

Shapley, Robert, Johnson, Elizabeth N., Hawken, Michael J.

2001

Overview

Perceptually, color is used to discriminate objects by hue and to identify color boundaries. The primate retina and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) have cell populations sensitive to color modulation, but the role of the primary visual cortex (V1) in color signal processing is uncertain. We re-evaluated color processing in V1 by studying single-neuron responses to luminance and to equiluminant color patterns equated for cone contrast. Many neurons respond robustly to both equiluminant color and luminance modulation (color-luminance cells). Also, there are neurons that prefer luminance (luminance cells), and a few neurons that prefer color (color cells). Surprisingly, most color-luminance cells are spatial-frequency tuned, with approximately equal selectivity for chromatic and achromatic patterns. Therefore, V1 retains the color sensitivity provided by the LGN, and adds spatial selectivity for color boundaries.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group US,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: Action Potentials / Animal Genetics and Genomics / Animals / Behavioral Sciences / Biological Techniques / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Color Perception - physiology / Color vision / Light / Macaca / Macaca fascicularis / Macaques / Neurobiology / Neurons - classification / Neurons - physiology / Neurosciences / Normal Distribution / Physiological aspects / Primates / Properties / Regression Analysis / Retinal Cone Photoreceptor Cells - physiology / Visual cortex / Visual Cortex - cytology / Visual Cortex - physiology