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Abstract:
Identifying an image presented behind an occluder is in many cases easily possible. However, under certain occlusion conditions, identication fails. Critically, identication performance
depends on which image parts are visible through the occluder. Area TE in the macaque visual
cortex is thought to play an important role in object recognition processes. Here, we
systematically test how the occlusion of different image regions affected the responses of area
TE neurons. Two monkeys (Macaca mulatta) learned to identify members of sets of natural
images. We then used Bubbles to assess how the occlusion of different image regions inuenced
an observers' performance in the identication task. Most importantly, we determined
which image regions had to be visible to allow the observer to identify the image correctly
(the informative image regions). In most cases, the visibility of a limited portion of the
image consistently inuenced the monkeys' performance. Based on these results, we constructed
observer-specic image versions that contained informative or uninformative regions
only. Recording from neurons in area TE, we compared the responses evoked by the full images
to the ones evoked by the image's informative or uninformative parts. Preliminary results
suggest that informative regions had a greater inuence on the response and selectivity of TE
neurons than non-informative regions. Thus, monkey observers tend to rely on restricted regions
of complex natural scenes during identication tasks, and this has an impact on their
representation in the inferior temporal cortex
