Neuroscientists Identified The Region Of The Brain Which Monitors Walls

This research, published today in Neuron, provides the basis for understanding the complex calculations our brains make to help us move. Directed by scientists from the brain mental behavior Institute Mortimer B. Zuckerman and the Aalto University in Finland, the work is too relevant to the artificial intelligence technology development focused at imitating the visual powers of the human brain.

"The vision gives us an almost instantaneous feeling of where we are in space, and in particular of the geometry of the surfaces (the floor, the walls) that limit our movement." It feels smooth but needs the coordinated activities of various brains. ", said Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, PhD, principal investigator of the Zuckerman Institute of Columbia and lead author of the article. "The way neurons work together to give us this sense of our environment remains a mystery, and with this study, we are one step closer to solving that puzzle."

To know how the brain perceives the geometry of its surroundings, the team of researchers asked the volunteers for looking at images of different three-dimensional scenes. An image can represent a typical room, with three walls, a ceiling and a floor. Then, the researchers systematically changed the scene: eliminating the wall, for example, or the ceiling. Simultaneously, they monitored the brain activity of the participants through a combination of two cutting-edge brain imaging technologies at Aalto's neuroimaging facilities in Finland.

"By performing this repeatedly for every participant, as we methodically changed the pictures, we could remake how their brains encoded each scene," Linda Henriksson, PhD, first author of the article and professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering at the University of Aalto.

Our visual system is organized in a hierarchy of stages. The first stage is outside the brain, in the retina, which can detect simple visual characteristics. Later stages in the brain have the power to detect more complex shapes. With the help of processing visual signals via multiple stages, and with repeated communication between stages, the brain makes a complete image of the world, with all its colors, shapes and textures.

In the cortex, first visual signals are analyzed in an area which is called the primary visual cortex. Then they are passed to several higher-level cortical areas for further analysis. The area of the occipital site (OPA), an intermediate level cortical processing stage, proved to be particularly interesting in the brain scans of the participants.

"Earlier studies had reflected that OPA neurons encode scenes, rather than isolated objects," said Dr. Kriegeskorte. He is also a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of cognitive imaging at Columbia. "But we still did not understand what aspect of the scenes were encoded by the millions of neurons in this region."

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190513120743.htm