Processing of shape defined by disparity in monkey inferior temporal cortex

Neurons in the monkey inferior temporal cortex (IT) have been shown to resp ond to shapes defined by luminance, texture, or motion. In the present stud y, we determined whether IT neurons respond to shapes defined solely by bin ocular disparity, and if so, whether signals of disparity and other visual cues to define shape converge on single IT neurons. We recorded extracellul ar activity from IT neurons while monkeys performed a fixation task. Among the neurons that responded to at least one of eight random-dot stereograms (RDSs) containing different disparity-defined shapes, 21% varied their resp onses to different RDSs. Responses of most of the neurons were positively c orrelated between two sets of RDSs, which consisted of different dot patter ns but defined the same set of eight shapes, whereas responses to RDSs and their monocular images were not correlated. This indicates that the respons e modulation for the eight RDSs reflects selectivity for shapes (or their c omponent contours) defined by disparity, although responses were also affec ted by dot patterns per se. Among the neurons that showed selectivity for s hapes defined by luminance or disparity, 44% were activated by both cues. R esponses of these neurons to luminance-defined shapes and those to disparit y-defined shapes were often positively correlated to each other. Furthermor e the stimulus rank, which was determined by the magnitude of responses to shapes, generally matched between these cues. The same held true between di sparity and texture cues. The results suggest that the signals of disparity , luminance, and texture cues to define the shapes converge on a population of single IT neurons to produce the selectivity for shapes.