Single-neuron extracellular recordings from area V1 of awake behaving rhesus monkeys viewing brightness illusions based on Victor Vasarely’s artworks

We recorded single-neuron responses from area V1 of two adult rhesus monkeys (Macaca Mulatta, one male and one female), during the presentation of brightness illusions based on Vasarely’s ‘nested squares.’ Each monkey was implanted with a head stabilization post, a scleral eye coil to monitor eye movements (sutured to the sclera to avoid slippage), and a recording chamber mounted over the occipital operculum to gain access to area V1. We recorded eye movements using the search coil technique (C-N-C Engineering and Remmel Labs), at 1 kHz. Excursions of gaze outside of an invisible 2x2 DVA (32 × 32 DU) fixation window were recorded but not rewarded. We acquired extracellular single-unit potentials with lacquer-coated electropolished tungsten electrodes at 1 kHz. A time-amplitude-window discriminator (BAK Electronics, Inc.) was used to isolate the spikes on-line and only spike times were recorded. The enclosed dataset includes a total of 53 neurons.