How MT neurons get influenced by V1 surround suppression ?

Description

It is widely accepted that V1 surround suppression mechanism plays a role in the end-stopping property of neurons in the primary visual cortex. But, what is not known is the extent of this mechanism to explain the motion direction perceived in MT neurons, and neither, the spatio-temporal content of the V1 suppressive surrounds that maximizes the end-stopping property. Here we model different V1 suppressive surrounds in order to maximize their end-stopping property and to characterize their spatio-temporal response. The output of these end-stopping V1 neurons converge into a population of modeled MT neurons with different motion direction selectivity. We also evaluate the effect of the V1 surround suppression mechanism in the motion direction seen by the population of MT neurons, how this motion direction depends on the V1 end-stopping property, and how this motion direction fits psychophysical experiments regarding motion perception, such as, barberpoles, plaids type I, plaids type II and unikinetic plaids.

Abstract

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