Mechanisms for Perceptual Stability in the Visual Cortex
Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Neuroscience
First Advisor
Nandy, Anirvan
Abstract
Saccadic eye movements are a ubiquitous feature of natural vision in humans, who make saccades 2-3 times per second. Saccades serve to shift the fovea, the high acuity region found at the center of our retina, towards objects in our environment that require more detailed inspection. Yet, each saccade also disrupts the entire visual scene by generating whole field motion in the direction opposite to each eye movement. How does the visual system deal with this potentially confounding motion and maintain perceptual stability? We consider this question in the context of saccadic suppression and receptive field remapping, two proposed mechanisms for maintaining visual stability. In Chapter 2, we investigate saccadic suppression in Area V4 of the primate cortex. We identify a projection targeting the input layer of V4 as the initiator of saccadic suppression, and track the progression of suppression across cortical layers both experimentally and with a computational model of the circuit. In Chapter 3, we study receptive field remapping in Area V2 of the primate cortex. We find that remapping is far more prominent in this early visual area than was previously thought, and we identify interactions between remapping and the encoding of stimulus information.
Recommended Citation
Denagamage, Sachira, "Mechanisms for Perceptual Stability in the Visual Cortex" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 880.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/880
