美国哈佛医学院Will Xiao等研究人员发现，猕猴视觉皮层中的特征选择反应跟随自然视觉中的眼球运动。相关论文于2024年4月29日在线发表于国际学术期刊《自然—神经科学》。

研究人员让13只猴子在460万次定点中自由观看数千张自然图像，记录了从初级视觉到前下颞皮层六个区域的883小时神经元反应，并分析了这些反应的空间、时间和特征选择性。人脸神经元通过类别选择性反应追踪其感受野内容。自一致性分析表明，一般的特征选择反应也会跟随眼球运动，并且在观看同一图像的数秒内保持凝视依赖性。

特征选择反应的计算模型确定了自由观看时视网膜感受野的位置。研究人员发现特征选择预测重映射的证据有限，而且没有观察历史整合。因此，在自然视觉过程中，腹侧视觉神经元主要以眼睛为中心的参考框架来表现世界。

据了解，在自然视觉中，灵长类动物每秒会通过眼球移动数次。目前还不清楚，在这种主动注视过程中，视觉神经元是否会表现出经典的视网膜定位特性、预测注视移动或反映感知的稳定质量，尤其是在复杂的自然场景中。

附：英文原文

Title: Feature-selective responses in macaque visual cortex follow eye movements during natural vision

Author: Xiao, Will, Sharma, Saloni, Kreiman, Gabriel, Livingstone, Margaret S.

Issue&Volume: 2024-04-29

Abstract: In natural vision, primates actively move their eyes several times per second via saccades. It remains unclear whether, during this active looking, visual neurons exhibit classical retinotopic properties, anticipate gaze shifts or mirror the stable quality of perception, especially in complex natural scenes. Here, we let 13 monkeys freely view thousands of natural images across 4.6million fixations, recorded 883h of neuronal responses in six areas spanning primary visual to anterior inferior temporal cortex and analyzed spatial, temporal and featural selectivity in these responses. Face neurons tracked their receptive field contents, indicated by category-selective responses. Self-consistency analysis showed that general feature-selective responses also followed eye movements and remained gaze-dependent over seconds of viewing the same image. Computational models of feature-selective responses located retinotopic receptive fields during free viewing. We found limited evidence for feature-selective predictive remapping and no viewing-history integration. Thus, ventral visual neurons represent the world in a predominantly eye-centered reference frame during natural vision.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-024-01631-5

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01631-5