Successful recognition of partially occluded objects is presumed to involve dynamic interactions between brain areas responsible for vision and cognition, but neurophysiological evidence for the involvement of feedback signals is lacking. Here, we demonstrate that neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) of monkeys performing a shape discrimination task respond more strongly to occluded than unoccluded stimuli. In contrast, neurons in visual area V4 respond more strongly to unoccluded stimuli. Analyses of V4 response dynamics reveal that many neurons exhibit two transient response peaks, the second of which emerges after vlPFC response onset and displays stronger selectivity for occluded shapes. We replicate these findings using a model of V4/vlPFC interactions in which occlusion-sensitive vlPFC neurons feed back to shape-selective V4 neurons, thereby enhancing V4 responses and selectivity to occluded shapes. These results reveal how signals from frontal and visual cortex could interact to facilitate object recognition under occlusion.

中文翻译：

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灵长类动物前额叶和视觉皮层中部分遮挡物体的动态表示

据推测，成功识别部分被遮挡的物体涉及负责视觉和认知的大脑区域之间的动态相互作用，但缺乏反馈信号参与的神经生理学证据。在这里，我们证明执行形状辨别任务的猴子腹外侧前额叶皮层 (vlPFC) 中的神经元对被遮挡的刺激比未遮挡的刺激反应更强烈。相比之下，视觉区域 V4 中的神经元对未遮挡的刺激反应更强烈。V4 响应动力学的分析表明，许多神经元表现出两个瞬态响应峰值，其中第二个出现在 vlPFC 响应开始后，并显示出对遮挡形状的更强选择性。我们使用 V4/vlPFC 相互作用模型复制这些发现，其中闭塞敏感 vlPFC 神经元反馈给形状选择性 V4 神经元，从而增强 V4 响应和对闭塞形状的选择性。这些结果揭示了来自额叶和视觉皮层的信号如何相互作用以促进遮挡下的物体识别。