Early recurrence enables figure border ownership

The face-vase illusion introduced by Rubin demonstrates how one can switch back and forth between two different interpretations depending on how the figure outlines are assigned [1]. This border ownership assignment is an important step in the perception of forms. Zhou et al. [2] found neurons in the visual cortex whose responses not only depend on the local features present in their classical receptive fields, but also on their contextual information. Various models proposed that feedback from higher ventral areas or lateral connections could provide the required contextual information. However, some studies [3, 4, 5] ruled out the plausibility of models exclusively based on lateral connections. In addition, further evidence [6] suggests that ventral feedback even from V4 is not fast enough to provide context to border ownership neurons in either V1 or V2. As a result, the border ownership assignment mechanism in the brain is a mystery yet to be solved. Here, we test with computational simulations the hypothesis that the dorsal stream provides the global information to border ownership cells in the ventral stream. Our proposed model incorporates early recurrence from the dorsal pathway as well as lateral modulations within the ventral stream. Our simulation experiments show that our model border ownership neurons, similar to their biological counterparts, exhibit different responses to figures on either side of the border.