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Abstract

We investigated the representation of color in cortical area V2 of macaque monkeys, and the association of color with other stimulus attributes. We measured the selectivity of individual V2 neurons for color, motion and form. Most neurons in V2 were orientation selective, about half of them were selective for color, and a minority of cells (about 20) were selective for size or direction. We correlated these physiological measurements with the anatomical location of the cells with respect to the cytochrome oxidase (CO) compartments of area V2. There was a tendency for color selective cells to be more frequent in the thin stripes, but color selective cells did also occur frequently in thick stripes and inter-stripes. We found no difference in the degree of color selectivity between the different CO-compartments. Furthermore, there was no negative correlation between color selectivity and selectivity for other stimulus attributes. We found many cells capable of encoding information along more than one stimulus dimension, regardless of their location with respect to the CO-compartments. We suggest that area V2 plays an important role in integrating information about color, motion and form. By this integration of stimulus attributes a cue-invariant representation of the visual world might be achieved.