Categorical perception of orientation in monkeys

Structural and functional substrates of orientation processing in monkeys have been clarified. However, orientation perception in monkeys has not been fully studied. In this study, the cognitive mechanism that controls monkeys' perception of orientation was evaluated. After the monkeys were trained to discriminate between a cardinal and an oblique orientation (e.g., 0 degrees and 30 degrees), their perceptual mechanisms underlying orientation discrimination were tested by using six orientations, ranging from 0 degrees to 150 degrees, including ones used in the discrimination training. Generalization tests showed that the monkeys who were trained with cardinal orientations (e.g., 0 degrees) as positive stimuli generalized their responses to the other cardinal orientation (e.g., 90 degrees). Similarly, the monkeys who were trained with oblique orientations (e.g., 30 degrees) as positive stimuli generalized their responses to all other oblique orientations (e.g., 60 degrees, 120 degrees, and 150 degrees). These findings indicated that the monkeys abstracted the quality of the cardinal/oblique category from the physical features of orientation stimuli although they were not trained to do so. Such an abstraction also suggested a discrepancy between a continuously and orderly arranged cortical map and a discontinuously categorized perception of orientation. The present findings provide insight into the learning-correlated plasticity of cortical orientation preference.