Visual Categorization of Natural Movies by Rats

摘要: Visual categorization of complex, natural stimuli has been studied for some time in human and nonhuman primates. Recent interest the rodent as a model visual perception, including higher-level functional specialization, leads to question how rodents would perform on task using stimuli. To answer this question, rats were trained two-alternative forced choice discriminate movies containing from other objects scrambled (ordinate-level categorization). Subsequently, transfer novel, previously unseen was tested, followed by series control probes. The results show that animals are capable acquiring decision rule abstracting common features generalize new Control probes demonstrate they did not use single low-level features, such motion energy or (local) luminance. Significant generalization even present with stationary snapshots untrained movies. variability within between training test stimuli, complexity movies, experiments analyses all suggest more high-level based complex stimulus than local luminance-based cues used classify novel In conclusion, can be probe ordinate-level rats.