Nonetheless, these results demonstrate that the activity of pulvinar neurons is modulated according to the stimulus category. The above response patterns of the pulvinar neurons indicate that the pulvinar neurons were also more responsive to the face-related stimuli than the non-face stimuli (simple geometric patterns). Among the five categories selleckchem of the visual stimuli, ratios of the pulvinar neurons that responded best to the face-like patterns and facial photos (27/68 = 39.7% and 22/68 = 32.3%, respectively) were significantly higher than those of the pulvinar neurons that responded best to the eye-like patterns, cartoon faces and simple geometric

patterns (11/68 = 16.2%, 3/68 = 4.4% and 5/68 = 7.4%, respectively; Fisher’s exact probability test, all P < 0.05). These results indicate that the pulvinar neurons were more responsive to the face-like patterns and facial photos than the eye-like patterns, cartoon faces and simple geometric patterns. To analyse whether the visual responses were dependent on a coherent pattern of visual stimuli, we compared responses to optimal stimuli

with responses to scrambled images of those stimuli. Figure 7A and B shows examples of two pulvinar neurons tested with scrambled images. The neuron shown in Fig. 7A responded strongly to the face-like patterns (Aa–Ac) but less to the scrambled image (Ad), GSK1120212 research buy while the neuron shown in Fig. 7B responded strongly to the human frontal faces (Ba–Bc) but less to the scrambled image (Bd). Figure 7C shows the effects of scrambling of the stimuli. Scrambling significantly reduced responses to the facial photos (paired t-test, P < 0.05) and face-like patterns (paired t-test, P < 0.001). These results indicate that the visual responses of the pulvinar neurons were dependent on coherent visual patterns present in the stimuli. Response latencies were analysed for all

of the 165 visually responsive neurons. Figure 8A shows the mean response latencies of the pulvinar neurons to various visual stimuli. The distribution of the latencies formed two peaks – a short latency group (30–120 ms) and a long latency group (170–500 ms). Resminostat The mean latency of the short latency group was 63.38 ± 1.89 ms. There was no significant difference in mean latencies between the lateral and medial pulvinar (62.03 ± 2.34 ms vs. 65.61 ± 3.56 ms, t-test, P > 0.05). To investigate how configuration of visual stimuli modulates the response latencies, we analysed the response latency to each category of visual stimuli (Fig. 8B). In the short latency group, there were significant differences in response latencies to the various stimulus categories (one-way anova; F4,205 = 11.446, P < 0.001). Multiple post hoc comparisons indicated that the mean response latencies to the face-like patterns (J1–4) were very short (50.12 ± 1.