Data from: Emergence of transformation-tolerant representations of visual objects in rat lateral extrastriate cortex

Rodents are emerging as increasingly popular models of visual functions.
Yet, evidence that rodent visual cortex is capable of advanced visual
processing, such as object recognition, is limited. Here we investigate
how neurons located along the progression of extrastriate areas that, in
the rat brain, run laterally to primary visual cortex, encode object
information. We found a progressive functional specialization of neural
responses along these areas, with: (1) a sharp reduction of the amount of
low-level, energy-related visual information encoded by neuronal firing;
and (2) a substantial increase in the ability of both single neurons and
neuronal populations to support discrimination of visual objects under
identity-preserving transformations (e.g., position and size changes).
These findings strongly argue for the existence of a rat object-processing
pathway, and point to the rodents as promising models to dissect the
neuronal circuitry underlying transformation-tolerant recognition of
visual objects.