Behavioral examination of the role of the primary visual cortex in the perceived size representation

Abstract

Abstract Previous research has shown that neural activity in the primary visual cortex (V1) and V1 surface area may be linked with subjective experience of size illusions. Here, we behaviorally measured the hallway illusion with experimental manipulations as a proxy of V1’s influence on size perception. We first tested whether the hallway illusion can persist without further recurrent processing by using backward masking. Next, we examined relations among the hallway illusion magnitude and other perceptual measures that have been suggested to be correlated with V1 surface area. In Experiment 1, the magnitude of the hallway illusion was not affected by the stimulus duration and visual masking when the hallway context was previewed (i.e., complex depth information is already processed). It suggests that V1 activity could support the size illusion to some extent even when recurrent processing between V1 and higher areas is disturbed. In Experiment 2, the hallway illusion magnitude was correlated with the Vernier acuity threshold, but not with physical size discriminability. Our results provide converging evidence with the previous findings in that neural activity in V1 may contribute to size illusions and that V1 surface area is not the sole factor that mediates size perception and visual precision.