0000000000067457
AUTHOR
W. Kiefer
Considerable deficits in the detection performance of the cat after lesion of the suprasylvian visual cortex
The ability of two cats to discriminate between two geometrical outline patterns in the presence of superimposed structured background was tested before and after bilateral removal of the lateral suprasylvian visual areas (PMLS, PLLS, AMLS, ALLS, part of area 7). There were mild deficits when patterns and background were kept stationary; these deficits may be due to a partial undercutting of areas 17, 18 and 19. However, there was a severe impairment in performance when the patterns were moving on a stationary background which may be due to loss of the suprasylvian visual areas. Movement of the background relative to the figure resulted in an intermediate detection deficit.
Lesion of areas 17/18/19: effects on the cat's performance in a binary detection task
The ability of two cats to discriminate between two geometrical outline patterns in the presence of superimposed Gaussian visual noise — i.e. in a binary detection task — was tested before and after bilateral removal of cortical areas 17, 18 and 19. The detection probability PD was measured as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio. After a lesion of areas 17, 18 and 19 both cats were unable to carry out the discrimination tasks. Their detection performance dropped to chance level, but after an extensive phase of retraining (3 months) they regained the ability to discriminate visual patterns. It was thus possible to obtain detection curves and to determine a measure of a performance which …