An exploration of the spatial scale over which orientation-dependent surround effects affect contour detection.

Contour detection is a crucial component of visual processing; however, performance on contour detection tasks can vary depending on the context of the visual scene. S. C. Dakin and N. J. Baruch (2009) showed that detection of a contour in an array of distracting elements depends on the orientation of flanking elements. Here, using a line of five collinear Gabor elements ("target contour") in a field of distractor Gabor elements, we systematically measured the effects of eccentricity, spacing, and spatial frequency on contour detection performance in three different contexts: randomly oriented distractors (control condition), flanking distractors (on either side of the collinear Gabors) aligned approximately parallel to the target contour, and flanking distractors aligned approximately orthogonal to the target contour. In the control condition, contour detection performance was best for larger Gabors (2 cpd) spaced farther apart (1.2°). Parallel flankers reduced performance for intermediate and large spacings and sizes compared to the control condition, while orthogonal flankers increased performance for the smallest spacing and size compared to the control condition. The results are fit by a model in which collinear facilitation, which is size-dependent but can persist for several degrees of visual angle, competes with orientation-dependent suppression from the flanking context when elements are separated by less than a degree of visual angle.

Contrast Response Functions for Single Gabor Patches: ROI-Based Analysis Over-Represents Low-Contrast Patches for GE BOLD.

IMPORTANT FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF BOLD FMRI DATA IS A LINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BOLD RESPONSE AND THE UNDERLYING NEURAL ACTIVITY: increased BOLD responses should reflect proportionate increases in the underlying neural activity. While previous studies have demonstrated a linear relationship between the peak amplitude of the BOLD response and neural activity in primary visual cortex (V1), these studies have used stimuli that excite large areas of cortex, and the linearity of the BOLD response has not been demonstrated when only a small patch of cortex is stimulated. The BOLD response to isolated Gabor patches of increasing contrast was measured with gradient echo (GE) BOLD and spin echo (SE) BOLD at 7 T. Our primary finding is notable spatial heterogeneity of the BOLD contrast response, particularly for the GE BOLD data, resulting in a more reliably linear relationship between BOLD data and estimated neural responses in the center of the cortical representations of the individual Gabor patches than near the edges. A control experiment with larger sinusoidal grating patches confirms that the observed sensitivity to voxel selection in the regions of interest-based analysis is unique to the small stimuli.

Retinotopic mapping with spin echo BOLD at 7T.

For blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI experiments, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) increases with increasing field strength for both gradient echo (GE) and spin echo (SE) BOLD techniques. However, susceptibility artifacts and nonuniform coil sensitivity profiles complicate large field-of-view fMRI experiments (e.g., experiments covering multiple visual areas instead of focusing on a single cortical region). Here, we use SE BOLD to acquire retinotopic mapping data in early visual areas, testing the feasibility of SE BOLD experiments spanning multiple cortical areas at 7T. We also use a recently developed method for normalizing signal intensity in T(1)-weighted anatomical images to enable automated segmentation of the cortical gray matter for scans acquired at 7T with either surface or volume coils. We find that the CNR of the 7T GE data (average single-voxel, single-scan stimulus coherence: 0.41) is almost twice that of the 3T GE BOLD data (average coherence: 0.25), with the CNR of the SE BOLD data (average coherence: 0.23) comparable to that of the 3T GE data. Repeated measurements in individual subjects find that maps acquired with 1.8-mm resolution at 3T and 7T with GE BOLD and at 7T with SE BOLD show no systematic differences in either the area or the boundary locations for V1, V2 and V3, demonstrating the feasibility of high-resolution SE BOLD experiments with good sensitivity throughout multiple visual areas.

High-resolution BOLD fMRI measurements of local orientation-dependent contextual modulation show a mismatch between predicted V1 output and local BOLD response.

The blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI response to suppressive neural activity has not been tested on a fine spatial scale. Using Gabor patches placed in the near periphery, we precisely localized individual regions of interest in primary visual cortex and measured the response at a range of contrasts in two different contexts: with parallel and with orthogonal flanking Gabor patches. Psychophysical measurements confirmed strong suppression of the target Gabor response when flanked by parallel Gabors. However, the BOLD response to the target with parallel flankers decreased as the target contrast increased, which contradicts psychophysical estimates of local neural activity.