Functional organization of the visual cortex

Visual training shapes the object representation in the visual cortex. However, there are two types of visual training that produce divergent training effects. (1) Using simple visual attributes (e.g. orientation, spatial frequency, etc.), Perceptual Learning studies reveal highly specific behavioral improvement in visual judgment, which is often accompanied with training effects in the early retinotopic cortex. (2) Perceptual Expertise studies try to understand real-world expertise in object recognition (e.g. experts recognizing cars, dogs, words, etc.), and typically observe learning effects that can generalize to unseen objects in the same object category, and reveal neural changes in the higher visual cortex. What factor(s) drive these qualitatively different training effects in the two types of training?

In a training study, we demonstrated that training experience is the critical factor driving the differences. Using novel objects, we created two training protocols that models each type of training. Importantly, we isolated the factor of training experience with other factors matched (e.g. training object sets, presentation conditions, training duration, etc.), and found qualitatively different behavioral and neural training effects in our two groups, each replicating classic training effects in their field. This work highlights the importance of experience in shaping our behavior, as well as the functions of the visual cortex.