Contrast induced changes in response latency depend on stimulus specificity

Neurones in visual cortex show increasing response latency with decreasing stimulus contrast. Neurophysiological recordings from neurones in inferior temporal cortex (IT) and the superior temporal sulcus (STS), show that the increment in response latency with decreasing stimulus contrast is considerably greater in higher visual areas than that seen in primary visual cortex. This suggests that the majority of the latency change is not retinal or V1 in origin, instead each cortical processing area adds latency at low contrast. I show that, as in earlier visual areas, response latency is more strongly dependent on stimulus contrast than stimulus identity. There is large variation in the extent to which response latency increases with decreasing stimulus contrast. I show that this between cell variability is, at least in part, related to the stimulus specificity of the neurones: the increase in response latency as stimulus contrast decreases is greater for neurones that respond to few stimuli compared to neurones that respond to many stimuli.