Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Neuronal correlates of perception in early visual cortex.

David Ress1, David J Heeger

  • 1Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg. 420/400, Stanford, California 94309, USA. ress@stanford.edu

Nature Neuroscience
|March 11, 2003
PubMed
Summary

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals that early visual cortex activity reflects subjective perception, not just visual stimuli. This brain activity accurately distinguishes between what subjects perceived and the actual visual input during a contrast detection task.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Spatial evolution in temporal dynamics of hemodynamic response function in human superior colliculi with ultra-high-resolution MRI at 9.4T.

Frontiers in neuroscience·2026
Same author

Age-related variations of the hemodynamic response function spatially resolved across human cerebral cortex.

Frontiers in aging neuroscience·2026
Same author

Unconditional stability of a recurrent neural circuit implementing divisive normalization.

Advances in neural information processing systems·2025
Same author

Attention-induced perceptual traveling waves in binocular rivalry.

Journal of vision·2025
Same author

Contrastive Self-Supervised Learning As Neural Manifold Packing.

ArXiv·2025
Same author

Hierarchical Neural Circuit Theory of Normalization and Inter-areal Communication.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2025

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Visual Perception
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

  • Understanding the neural basis of visual perception is crucial for cognitive neuroscience.
  • Early visual cortex (V1-V3) processes fundamental visual information like contrast.
  • Differentiating neural responses to perceived versus presented stimuli remains a key challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether activity in the early human visual cortex reflects subjective perception or physical stimulus presence.
  • To correlate brain activity with behavioral responses in a contrast-detection task.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to measure brain activity.
  • Participants performed a challenging contrast-detection task on varied background patterns.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Cortical activity was analyzed based on signal detection categories: hits, false alarms, misses, and correct rejects.

    • Main Results:

    • Activity in early visual cortex (V1-V3) was retinotopically specific.
    • Both hits and false alarms showed significantly higher cortical activity compared to misses and correct rejects.
    • False alarms elicited greater activity than misses, suggesting perception-based neural correlates.

    Conclusions:

    • Activity in the early visual cortex corresponds to the subject's percept, not solely the presented stimulus.
    • fMRI can differentiate neural signals related to subjective visual experience.
    • These findings advance our understanding of how the brain constructs visual reality.