Figure-Ground Modulation in the Human Lateral Geniculate Nucleus Is Distinguishable from Top-Down Attention

Nearly all of the information that reaches the primary visual cortex (V1) of the brain passes from the retina through the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus. Although the LGN's role in relaying feedforward signals from the retina to the cortex is well understood [1, 2], the functional role of the extensive feedback it receives from the cortex has remained elusive [3-6]. Here, we investigated whether corticothalamic feedback may contribute to perceptual processing in the LGN in a manner that is distinct from top-down effects of attention [7-10]. We used high-resolution fMRI at 7 Tesla to simultaneously measure responses to orientation-defined figures in the human LGN and V1. We found robust enhancement of perceptual figures throughout the early visual system, which could be distinguished from the effects of covert spatial attention [11-13]. In a second experiment, we demonstrated that figure enhancement occurred in the LGN even when the figure and surrounding background were presented dichoptically (i.e., to different eyes). As binocular integration primarily occurs in V1 [14, 15], these results implicate a mechanism of automatic, contextually sensitive feedback from binocular visual cortex underlying figure-ground modulation in the LGN. Our findings elucidate the functional mechanisms of this core function of the visual system [16-18], which allows people to segment and detect meaningful figures in complex visual environments. The involvement of the LGN in this rich, contextually informed visual processing-despite showing minimal feedforward selectivity for visual features [19, 20]-underscores the role of recurrent processing at the earliest stages of visual processing.