Elsevier

Progress in Neurobiology

Volume 207, December 2021, 101998
Progress in Neurobiology

Zooming-in on higher-level vision: High-resolution fMRI for understanding visual perception and awareness

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2021.101998Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Simple responses in early visual areas are studied invasively with high resolution.

  • Complex responses in higher areas are studied non-invasively with coarse resolution.

  • Pushing the spatial resolution of fMRI can bridge these two research fields.

  • It can be used to study complex responses in early visual areas non-invasively.

  • It can be used to reveal the fine-scale organization of higher-level areas.

Abstract

One of the central questions in visual neuroscience is how the sparse retinal signals leaving our eyes are transformed into a rich subjective visual experience of the world. Invasive physiology studies, which offers the highest spatial resolution, have revealed many facts about the processing of simple visual features like contrast, color, and orientation, focusing on the early visual areas. At the same time, standard human fMRI studies with comparably coarser spatial resolution have revealed more complex, functionally specialized, and category-selective responses in higher visual areas. Although the visual system is the best understood among the sensory modalities, these two areas of research remain largely segregated. High-resolution fMRI opens up a possibility for linking them. On the one hand, it allows studying how the higher-level visual functions affect the fine-scale activity in early visual areas. On the other hand, it allows discovering the fine-scale functional organization of higher visual areas and exploring their functional connectivity with visual areas lower in the hierarchy. In this review, I will discuss examples of successful work undertaken in these directions using high-resolution fMRI and discuss where this method could be applied in the future to advance our understanding of the complexity of higher-level visual processing.

Abbreviations

fMRI
functional magnetic resonance imaging
LGN
lateral geniculate nucleus
MVPA
multi-voxel pattern analysis
pRF
population receptive field
SNR
signal-to-noise ratio
TMS
transcranial magnetic stimulation

Keywords

fMRI
Vision
Grouping
Completion
Awareness
Consciousness
High resolution
Layers
Columns

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