Feature selectivity and invariance in marsupial primary visual cortex

Abstract

Abstract: A fundamental question in sensory neuroscience revolves around how neurons represent complex visual stimuli. In mammalian primary visual cortex (V1), neurons decode intricate visual features to identify objects, with most being selective for edge orientation, but with half of those also developing invariance to edge position within their receptive fields. Position invariance allows cells to continue to code an edge even when it moves around. Combining feature selectivity and invariance is integral to successful object recognition. Considering the marsupial–eutherian divergence 160 million years ago, we explored whether feature selectivity and invariance was similar in marsupials an..