This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing theresources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject andinvestigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source,and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed isfor the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator.The visual world is ambiguous and cluttered and cannot be precisely stored in our brains. Our brains do not have a 'photographic' ability to store or recall visual images and scenes. Instead, the brain does both more and less, imposing structure onto ambiguity and discarding information that contradicts the imposed structure. This process is particularly important when viewing ambiguous or conflicting visual information. We study the neural basis of object recognition and perception by recording from neurons in the inferotemporal cortex of the macaque and trying to understand how these neurons produce the remarkable primate capacity for vision. In our most intriguing work of the year, we have found that individual neurons in IT cortex often provide sufficient information to explain the remarkable capacity for discriminating among objects (Allred and Jagadeesh, 2007), but only when animals are actively performing a task (Liu and Jagadeesh, 2008). Furthermore, our ongoing experiments suggest that this capacity is formed by the modulation of neurons in inferotemporal cortex so that they match the capacity of the animal for telling the difference among images. When monkeys interpret ambiguous images, the neural responses shift over the course of a session to match the monkey's interpretation of the image. Thus, neurons in IT might be the substrate upon which the brain does 'more and less' imposing structure by modulating the neural responses in IT to match the visual goals of the observer.
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