Aging reduces center-surround antagonism in visual motion processing. Export

@article{citeulike:880599, abstract = {Discriminating the direction of motion of a low-contrast pattern becomes easier with increasing stimulus area. However, increasing the size of a high-contrast pattern makes it more difficult for observers to discriminate motion. This surprising result, termed spatial suppression, is thought to be mediated by a form of center-surround suppression found throughout the visual pathway. Here, we examine the counterintuitive hypothesis that aging alters such center-surround interactions in ways that improve performance in some tasks. We found that older observers required briefer stimulus durations than did younger observers to extract information about stimulus direction in conditions using large, high-contrast patterns. We suggest that this age-related improvement in motion discrimination may be linked to reduced GABAergic functioning in the senescent brain, which reduces center-surround suppression in motion-selective neurons.}, address = {Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada.}, author = {Betts, Lisa R. and Taylor, Christopher P. and Sekuler, Allison B. and Bennett, Patrick J.}, citeulike-article-id = {880599}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.12.041}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15694323}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=15694323}, day = {3}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuron.2004.12.041}, issn = {0896-6273}, journal = {Neuron}, keywords = {aging, neuron, senses}, month = {February}, number = {3}, pages = {361--366}, posted-at = {2008-01-10 18:23:36}, priority = {2}, title = {Aging reduces center-surround antagonism in visual motion processing.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.12.041}, volume = {45}, year = {2005} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:880599 L3 - citeulike-article-id:880599 N2 - Discriminating the direction of motion of a low-contrast pattern becomes easier with increasing stimulus area. However, increasing the size of a high-contrast pattern makes it more difficult for observers to discriminate motion. This surprising result, termed spatial suppression, is thought to be mediated by a form of center-surround suppression found throughout the visual pathway. Here, we examine the counterintuitive hypothesis that aging alters such center-surround interactions in ways that improve performance in some tasks. We found that older observers required briefer stimulus durations than did younger observers to extract information about stimulus direction in conditions using large, high-contrast patterns. We suggest that this age-related improvement in motion discrimination may be linked to reduced GABAergic functioning in the senescent brain, which reduces center-surround suppression in motion-selective neurons. IS - 3 JF - Neuron SN - 0896-6273 AD - Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada. EP - 366 TI - Aging reduces center-surround antagonism in visual motion processing. VL - 45 SP - 361 KW - aging KW - neuron KW - senses AU - Betts, Lisa AU - Taylor, Christopher AU - Sekuler, Allison AU - Bennett, Patrick PY - 2005/02/03/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.12.041 ER -