Emergence of transformation-tolerant representations of visual objects in rat lateral extrastriate cortex

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Tafazoli, Sina
De Franceschi, Gioia
Rosselli, Federica Bianca
Vanzella, Walter
Riggi, Margherita
Buffolo, Federica
Panzeri, Stefano
Zoccolan, Davide
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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22794Metadata
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Tafazoli, Sina, Houman Safaai, Gioia De Franceschi, Federica Bianca Rosselli, Walter Vanzella, Margherita Riggi, Federica Buffolo, Stefano Panzeri, and Davide Zoccolan. 2017. “Emergence of transformation-tolerant representations of visual objects in rat lateral extrastriate cortex.” eLife 6 (1): e22794. doi:10.7554/eLife.22794. http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22794.Abstract
Rodents are emerging as increasingly popular models of visual functions. Yet, evidence that rodent visual cortex is capable of advanced visual processing, such as object recognition, is limited. Here we investigate how neurons located along the progression of extrastriate areas that, in the rat brain, run laterally to primary visual cortex, encode object information. We found a progressive functional specialization of neural responses along these areas, with: (1) a sharp reduction of the amount of low-level, energy-related visual information encoded by neuronal firing; and (2) a substantial increase in the ability of both single neurons and neuronal populations to support discrimination of visual objects under identity-preserving transformations (e.g., position and size changes). These findings strongly argue for the existence of a rat object-processing pathway, and point to the rodents as promising models to dissect the neuronal circuitry underlying transformation-tolerant recognition of visual objects. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22794.001Other Sources
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388540/pdf/Terms of Use
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