Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits
Visual object recognition is driven through the what pathway, a hierarchy of visual areas processing features of increasing complexity and abstractness. The primary visual cortex (V1), this pathway’s origin, exhibits retinotopic organization: neurons respond to stimuli in specific visual field regio...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2025-05-01
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| Series: | NeuroImage |
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| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811925001491 |
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| author | Andrea I. Costantino Benjamin O. Pelzer Mark A. Williams Matthew J. Crossley |
| author_facet | Andrea I. Costantino Benjamin O. Pelzer Mark A. Williams Matthew J. Crossley |
| author_sort | Andrea I. Costantino |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Visual object recognition is driven through the what pathway, a hierarchy of visual areas processing features of increasing complexity and abstractness. The primary visual cortex (V1), this pathway’s origin, exhibits retinotopic organization: neurons respond to stimuli in specific visual field regions. A neuron responding to a central stimulus will not respond to a peripheral one, and vice versa. However, despite this organization, task-relevant feedback about peripheral stimuli can be decoded in unstimulated foveal cortex, and disrupting this feedback impairs discrimination behavior. The information encoded by this feedback remains unclear, as prior studies used computer-generated objects ill-suited to dissociate different representation types. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the nature of information encoded in periphery-to-fovea feedback using real-world stimuli. Participants performed a same/different discrimination task on peripherally displayed images of vehicles and faces. Using fMRI multivariate decoding, we found that both peripheral and foveal V1 could decode images separated by low-level perceptual models (vehicles) but not those separated by semantic models (faces). This suggests the feedback primarily carries low-level perceptual information. In contrast, higher visual areas resolved semantically distinct images. A functional connectivity analysis revealed foveal V1 connections to both peripheral V1 and later-stage visual areas. These findings indicate that while both early and late visual areas may contribute to information transfer from peripheral to foveal processing streams, higher-to-lower area transfer may involve information loss. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-e6d829a5cd0844e28b0264862b6ee5a4 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 1095-9572 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-05-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | NeuroImage |
| spelling | doaj-art-e6d829a5cd0844e28b0264862b6ee5a42025-08-20T02:27:11ZengElsevierNeuroImage1095-95722025-05-0131112114710.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121147Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuitsAndrea I. Costantino0Benjamin O. Pelzer1Mark A. Williams2Matthew J. Crossley3Brain and Cognition, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; Corresponding author.Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, SingaporeSchool of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; Macquarie University Performance and Expertise Research center, Macquarie University, Sydney, AustraliaSchool of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; Macquarie University Performance and Expertise Research center, Macquarie University, Sydney, AustraliaVisual object recognition is driven through the what pathway, a hierarchy of visual areas processing features of increasing complexity and abstractness. The primary visual cortex (V1), this pathway’s origin, exhibits retinotopic organization: neurons respond to stimuli in specific visual field regions. A neuron responding to a central stimulus will not respond to a peripheral one, and vice versa. However, despite this organization, task-relevant feedback about peripheral stimuli can be decoded in unstimulated foveal cortex, and disrupting this feedback impairs discrimination behavior. The information encoded by this feedback remains unclear, as prior studies used computer-generated objects ill-suited to dissociate different representation types. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the nature of information encoded in periphery-to-fovea feedback using real-world stimuli. Participants performed a same/different discrimination task on peripherally displayed images of vehicles and faces. Using fMRI multivariate decoding, we found that both peripheral and foveal V1 could decode images separated by low-level perceptual models (vehicles) but not those separated by semantic models (faces). This suggests the feedback primarily carries low-level perceptual information. In contrast, higher visual areas resolved semantically distinct images. A functional connectivity analysis revealed foveal V1 connections to both peripheral V1 and later-stage visual areas. These findings indicate that while both early and late visual areas may contribute to information transfer from peripheral to foveal processing streams, higher-to-lower area transfer may involve information loss.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811925001491Human visionFeedbackfMRIFoveal visionPeripheral vision |
| spellingShingle | Andrea I. Costantino Benjamin O. Pelzer Mark A. Williams Matthew J. Crossley Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits NeuroImage Human vision Feedback fMRI Foveal vision Peripheral vision |
| title | Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits |
| title_full | Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits |
| title_fullStr | Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits |
| title_full_unstemmed | Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits |
| title_short | Partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits |
| title_sort | partial information transfer from peripheral visual streams to foveal visual streams may be mediated through local primary visual circuits |
| topic | Human vision Feedback fMRI Foveal vision Peripheral vision |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811925001491 |
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