We investigated the representation of color in cortical area V2 of macaque monkeys, and the association of color with other stimulus attributes. We measured the selectivity of individual V2 neurons for color, motion, and form. Most neurons in V2 were orientation selective, about half of them were selective for color, and a minority of cells (about 20%) were selective for size or direction. We correlated these physiological measurements with the anatomical location of the cells with respect to the cytochrome oxidase (CO) compartments of area V2. There was a tendency for color-selective cells to be found more frequently in the thin stripes, but color-selective cells also occurred frequently in thick stripes and inter-stripes. We found no difference in the degree of color selectivity between the different CO compartments. Furthermore, there was no negative correlation between color selectivity and selectivity for other stimulus attributes. We found many cells capable of encoding information along more than one stimulus dimension, regardless of their location with respect to the CO compartments. We suggest that area V2 plays an important role in integrating information about color, motion, and form. By this integration of stimulus attributes a cue-invariant representation of the visual world might be achieved.

Previous research suggests binocular rivalry disrupts extrastriate, but not striate processes, although the locus along the visual pathway at which such disruption first occurs is uncertain. It has been argued that subjective contours arise via a two-stage process in which end-stopped cells feed into orientation-sensitive neurones in V2, and that orientation aftereffects induced with subjective contours are the product of mechanisms similar to those giving rise to real contour aftereffects. If binocular rivalry disrupts the acquisition of subjective contour aftereffects, then it follows from this model that rivalry disrupts processing in V2. Experiments reported here confirm this and provide evidence which suggests binocular rivalry arises through interactions between binocular neurones, rather than via some type of specialized binocular rivalry mechanism.