Neural computation in integrity of visual saliency

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26290004
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Neurophysiology / General neuroscience
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: OGAWA TADASHI 京都大学, 次世代研究創成ユニット, 特任教授/プログラムマネージャー (50311197)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 三浦 健一郎 京都大学, 医学研究科, 助教 (20362535)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 眼球運動 / saliency / 頭頂葉 / サル / 注意 / 視覚探索

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We trained monkeys to search for a target that was salient in the shape, color dimension, or both dimensions, and recorded the neuronal activity from the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of monkeys performing visual search. We found two major properties in LIP neurons. First, some LIP neurons enhanced the magnitude of their activity, irrespective of the spatial location of the target, when the target was moderately salient (difficult search condition) than when it was quite salient (easy search condition). This result suggests that these neurons could contribute to enhance the activity of LIP neurons to achieve the neuronal threshold leading the saccade eye movement to the salient target. Moreover, other neurons exhibited the target discriminative activity only in one dimension (shape or color), suggesting that LIP is located at the intermediate stage in the representation visual saliency. Thus, our results revealed the mechanisms underlying neuronal representation of visual saliency.

Free Research Field

神経科学