Hiroshi Ban and Andrew Welchman's new paper in Nature Neuroscience reveals an area of the brain that fuses different depth cues together to support three-dimensional (3D) perception.
The research demonstrates that area V3B/KO in the dorsal visual cortex (highlighted in the image, right) is particularly important in integrating depth information from different cues. The study used fMRI and examined brain responses to displays that contained depth from binocular disparity, depth from motion, and these signals in combination. The results show that fMRI responses are more discriminable when two cues concurrently signal depth, and that information provided by one cue is diagnostic of depth indicated by the other. This suggests a cortical node important when perceiving depth, and highlights computations based on fusion in the dorsal stream.
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