Human V1 laminar profile of figure ground segmentation (7T fMRI)

A key question in object perception is how an object is segregated from its background and how neural mechanisms in early visual areas contribute to this process. Cortical layers play different roles in this segregation process, but the precise mechanisms in human early visual cortex remain elusive. To address these questions, we used 7 Tesla functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI; 0.8×0.8×0.8 mm resolution) to measured activity changes in early visual areas of humans who performed a texture-segregation task. We observed enhanced retinotopic responses in primary visual cortex (V1) induced by figures compared to backgrounds. In addition, we estimated the V1 laminar profiles of figure-ground segmentation processes in retinotopic representations of the edges and the centre of the figure.