Title: Sensitivity to Timing and Order in Human Visual Cortex Show Chinese title

Title: 时间与顺序在人类视觉皮层中的敏感性

Abstract: Visual recognition takes a small fraction of a second and relies on the cascade of signals along the ventral visual stream. Given the rapid path through multiple processing steps between photoreceptors and higher visual areas, information must progress from stage to stage very quickly. This rapid progression of information suggests that fine temporal details of the neural response may be important to the how the brain encodes visual signals. We investigated how changes in the relative timing of incoming visual stimulation affect the representation of object information by recording intracranial field potentials along the human ventral visual stream while subjects recognized objects whose parts were presented with varying asynchrony. Visual responses along the ventral stream were sensitive to timing differences between parts as small as 17 ms. In particular, there was a strong dependency on the temporal order of stimulus presentation, even at short asynchronies. This sensitivity to the order of stimulus presentation provides evidence that the brain may use differences in relative timing as a means of representing information. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 视觉识别只需零点几秒，并依赖于腹侧视觉流中的信号级联。 由于从光感受器到更高视觉区域的多个处理步骤之间存在快速路径，信息必须非常迅速地从一个阶段传递到另一个阶段。 信息的这种快速传递表明，神经反应的精细时间细节可能对大脑编码视觉信号的方式很重要。 我们研究了输入视觉刺激的相对时间变化如何影响物体信息的表示，方法是在受试者识别部分以不同异步性呈现的物体时，记录人类腹侧视觉流中的颅内场电位。 腹侧流中的视觉反应对部分之间的定时差异非常敏感，甚至小至17毫秒。 特别是，即使在短的异步性下，对刺激呈现的时间顺序也有很强的依赖性。 对刺激呈现顺序的这种敏感性提供了证据，表明大脑可能利用相对时间的差异作为表示信息的一种方式。