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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Published on: May 12, 2019

Statistics of natural scenes shape contextual modulation in the visual cortex.

Jiakun Fu¹, Suhas Shrinivasan², Luca Baroni³

¹Department of Neuroscience, Center for Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA.

|March 27, 2026

Summary

Neural responses in the visual cortex depend on context. Surround stimuli that naturally extend central visual input facilitate neuronal activity, while dissimilar surrounds suppress it, revealing principles of natural vision processing.

Keywords:

Bayesian inference V1 center-surround interactions contextual modulation convolutional neural networks macaque mouse natural image statistics primary visual cortex visual perception

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

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Published on: May 12, 2019

Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis

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Published on: November 9, 2011

Generating Strictly Controlled Stimuli for Figure Recognition Experiments

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Published on: March 18, 2019

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience
Vision Science

Background:

Visual perception is influenced by surrounding visual information.
Classical studies show context-dependent neuronal responses, but naturalistic conditions are less understood.
Primary visual cortex (V1) processes contextual information.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate contextual modulation of neuronal responses under naturalistic visual conditions.
To model and predict neuronal responses to natural images with varying surrounds.
To compare findings across species (mouse and macaque V1).

Main Methods:

Recordings from mouse and macaque primary visual cortex (V1).
Training convolutional neural network models to predict neuronal responses to natural images.
Synthesizing surround stimuli to selectively suppress or facilitate responses to optimal center inputs.
Validating model predictions with in vivo experiments.

Main Results:

Facilitatory surrounds aligned with natural image statistics by resembling continuations of the center stimulus.
Suppressive surrounds deviated from natural image statistics.
Similar principles of contextual modulation were observed in both mouse and macaque V1.
Models accurately predicted responses to classical grating stimuli.

Conclusions:

Neuronal responses to visual stimuli are shaped by context, favoring surrounds consistent with natural image statistics.
The findings provide insights into how the visual cortex processes contextual information.
A normative Bayesian model suggests neuronal activity reflects posterior beliefs about center-surround configurations.