Jonathan Winawer

Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination

English and Russian color terms divide the color spectrum differently. Unlike English, Russian makes an obligatory distinction between lighter blues (“goluboy”) and darker blues (“siniy”). We investigated whether this linguistic difference leads to differences in color discrimination. We tested English and Russian speakers in a speeded color discrimination task using blue stimuli that spanned the siniy/goluboy border. We found that Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two colors when they fell into different linguistic categories in Russian (one siniy and the other goluboy) than when they were from the same linguistic category (both siniy or both goluboy). Moreover, this category advantage was eliminated by a verbal, but not a spatial, dual task. These effects were stronger for difficult discriminations (i.e., when the colors were perceptually close) than for easy discriminations (i.e., when the colors were further apart). English speakers tested on the identical stimuli did not show a category advantage in any of the conditions. These results demonstrate that (i) categories in language affect performance on simple perceptual color tasks and (ii) the effect of language is online (and can be disrupted by verbal interference).

Imaging retinotopic maps in the human brain

A quarter-century ago visual neuroscientists had little information about the number and organization of retinotopic maps in human visual cortex. The advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a non-invasive, spatially-resolved technique for measuring brain activity, provided a wealth of data about human retinotopic maps. Just as there are differences amongst non-human primate maps, the human maps have their own unique properties. Many human maps can be measured reliably in individual subjects during experimental sessions lasting less than an hour. The efficiency of the measurements and the relatively large amplitude of functional MRI signals in visual cortex make it possible to develop quantitative models of functional responses within specific maps in individual subjects. During this last quarter-century, there has also been significant progress in measuring properties of the human brain at a range of length and time scales, including white matter pathways, macroscopic properties of gray and white matter, and cellular and molecular tissue properties. We hope the next 25years will see a great deal of work that aims to integrate these data by modeling the network of visual signals. We do not know what such theories will look like, but the characterization of human retinotopic maps from the last 25years is likely to be an important part of future ideas about visual computations.

Mapping hV4 and ventral occipital cortex: The venous eclipse

While the fourth human visual field map (hV4) has been studied for two decades, there remain uncertainties about its spatial organization. In analyzing fMRI measurements designed to resolve these issues, we discovered a significant problem that afflicts measurements from ventral occipital cortex, and particularly measurements near hV4. In most hemispheres the fMRI hV4 data are contaminated by artifacts from the transverse sinus (TS). We created a model of the TS artifact and showed that the model predicts the locations of anomalous fMRI responses to simple large-field on-off stimuli. In many subjects, and particularly the left hemisphere, the TS artifact masks fMRI responses specifically in the region of cortex that distinguishes the two main hV4 models. By selecting subjects with a TS displaced from the lateral edge of hV4, we were able to see around the vein. In these subjects, the visual field coverage extends to the lower meridian, or nearly so, consistent with a model in which hV4 is located on the ventral surface and responds to signals throughout the full contralateral hemifield.

Image segmentation and lightness perception

The perception of surface albedo (lightness) is one of the most basic aspects of visual awareness. It is well known that the apparent lightness of a target depends on the context in which it is embedded, but there is extensive debate about the computations and representations underlying perceived lightness. One view asserts that the visual system explicitly separates surface reflectance from the prevailing illumination and atmospheric conditions in which it is embedded, generating layered image representations. Some recent theory has challenged this view and asserted that the human visual system derives surface lightness without explicitly segmenting images into multiple layers. Here we present new lightness illusions—the largest reported to date—that unequivocally demonstrate the effect that layered image representations can have in lightness perception. We show that the computations that underlie the decomposition of luminance into multiple layers under conditions of transparency can induce dramatic lightness illusions, causing identical texture patches to appear either black or white. These results indicate that mechanisms involved in decomposing images into layered representations can play a decisive role in the perception of surface lightness.

Structural integration in language and music: Evidence for a shared system

In this study, we investigate whether language and music share cognitive resources for structural processing. We report an experiment that used sung materials and manipulated linguistic complexity (subject-extracted relative clauses, object-extracted relative clauses) and musical complexity (in-key critical note, out-of-key critical note, auditory anomaly on the critical note involving a loudness increase). The auditory-anomaly manipulation was included in order to test whether the difference between in-key and out-of-key conditions might be due to any salient, unexpected acoustic event. The critical dependent measure involved comprehension accuracies to questions about the propositional content of the sentences asked at the end of each trial. The results revealed an interaction between linguistic and musical complexity such that the difference between the subject- and object-extracted relative clause conditions was larger in the out-of-key condition than in the in-key and auditory-anomaly conditions. These results provide evidence for an overlap in structural processing between language and music.

Synesthetic colors determined by having colored refrigerator magnets in childhood

Synesthesia is a condition in which percepts in one modality reliably elicit secondary perceptions in the same or a different modality that are not in the stimulus. In a common manifestation, synesthetes see colors in response to spoken or written letters, words and numbers. In this paper we demonstrate that the particular colors seen by a grapheme-color synesthete AED were learned from a set of refrigerator magnets and that the synesthesia later transferred to Cyrillic in a systematic way, with the colors induced by the Cyrillic letters determined by their visual or phonetic similarity to English letters. Closer examination of the data reveals that letters of either language that are more visually similar to the English capitals in the magnet set are also more saturated. In order to differentiate AEDs synesthesia from ordinary memory, we use a novel psychophysical method to show that AEDs synesthetic colors are subject to ordinary lightness constancy mechanisms. This suggests that the level of representation at which her synesthesia arises is early in the stream of visual processing.

A Brain Area for Visual Numerals

Is there a distinct area within the human visual system that has a preferential response to numerals, as there is for faces, words, or scenes? We addressed this question using intracranial electrophysiological recordings and observed a significantly higher response in the high-frequency broadband range (high γ, 65–150 Hz) to visually presented numerals, compared with morphologically similar (i.e., letters and false fonts) or semantically and phonologically similar stimuli (i.e., number words and non-number words). Anatomically, this preferential response was consistently localized in the inferior temporal gyrus and anterior to the temporo-occipital incisure. This region lies within or close to the fMRI signal-dropout zone produced by the nearby auditory canal and venous sinus artifacts, an observation that may account for negative findings in previous fMRI studies of preferential response to numerals. Because visual numerals are culturally dependent symbols that are only learned through education, our novel finding of anatomically localized preferential response to such symbols provides a new example of acquired category-specific responses in the human visual system.

Temporal constraints on lens compensation in chicks.

If the effective focal length of a growing eye is modified by spectacle lenses, the eye compensates by altering its growth, thereby keeping images in focus, a process we presume is similar to normal emmetropization. Using chicks, we have investigated how much visual exposure the eye needs to exhibit the two principal components of ocular compensation: altered rate of elongation (a scleral mechanism) and altered choroidal thickness. We have found that surprisingly small amounts of vision through spectacle lenses can elicit robust scleral and choroidal compensation if other visual feedback is limited by keeping the animals in the dark when not wearing lenses. Furthermore, we have found that the amount of vision necessary to induce these responses can be summarized as three rules: First, several brief daily episodes are more effective than a single or a few longer daily episodes, even if the total amount of vision is the same. Second, extremely brief episodes, even if very frequent, are relatively ineffective. Third, when plus and minus lenses are worn successively on the same eye, the plus lens has the dominant effect, even if the minus lens is worn five times longer than the plus lens. In addition, we have shown that the elongation rate and choroidal thickness responses are dissociable, such that brief, infrequent lens-viewing produces only an elongation response in the case of plus lens-wear and only a choroid response in the case of minus lens-wear. We thus show that the emmetropization system does not integrate defocus in a simple, linear fashion. These non-linearities, if present in children, might explain why, although education and reading show an epidemiological correlation with myopia, the total time spent reading and doing other nearwork by individual children generally does not predict the degree of myopia. It may therefore be necessary to quantify more complex temporal patterns of nearwork over the day in order to measure the impact of nearwork on eye growth.

Cortical Maps and White Matter Tracts following Long Period of Visual Deprivation and Retinal Image Restoration

Abnormal visual input during development has dramatic effects on the visual system. How does the adult visual system respond when input is corrected? MM lost his left eye and became blind in the right due to corneal damage at the age of 3. At age 46, MM regained his retinal image, but his visual abilities, even seven years following the surgery, remain severely limited, and he does not rely on vision for daily life. Neuroimaging measurements reveal several differences among MM, sighted controls, sighted monocular, and early blind subjects. We speculate that these differences stem from damage during the critical period in development of retinal neurons with small, foveal receptive fields. In this case, restoration of functional vision requires more than improving retinal image contrast. In general, visual restoration will require accounting for the developmental trajectory of the individual and the consequences of the early deprivation on cortical circuitry.

Compressive spatial summation in human visual cortex

Neurons within a small (a few cubic millimeters) region of visual cortex respond to stimuli within a restricted region of the visual field. Previous studies have characterized the population response of such neurons using a model that sums contrast linearly across the visual field. In this study, we tested linear spatial summation of population responses using blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI. We measured BOLD responses to a systematic set of contrast patterns and discovered systematic deviation from linearity: the data are more accurately explained by a model in which a compressive static nonlinearity is applied after linear spatial summation. We found that the nonlinearity is present in early visual areas (e.g., V1, V2) and grows more pronounced in relatively anterior extrastriate areas (e.g., LO-2, VO-2). We then analyzed the effect of compressive spatial summation in terms of changes in the position and size of a viewed object. Compressive spatial summation is consistent with tolerance to changes in position and size, an important characteristic of object representation.