Temporal correlations of orientations in natural scenes

The visual system performs complicated operations such as visual grouping e*ciently on its natural input. To study this adaptation to natural stimuli we measure spatio-temporal interactions of orientations in scenes with natural temporal structure recorded using a camera mounted to a cat’s head. We -nd long range spatial and long lasting temporal correlations of orientations with collinear interactions being most prevalent and preserved over time. The spatial extent of correlations corresponds to the length of horizontal cortical connections and the temporal duration of the interactions allows co-activation of lateral and bottom up input by the same visual event. c © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.