“Vision gives us an almost instant sense where we are in space, and in particular of the geometry of the surfaces — the ground, the walls — which constrain our movement. It feels effortless, but it requires the coordinated activity of multiple brain regions,” said Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and the paper’s senior author. “How neurons work together to give us this sense of our surroundings has remained mysterious. With this study, we are a step closer to solving that puzzle.”

To figure out how the brain perceives the geometry of its surroundings, the research team asked volunteers to look at images of different three-dimensional scenes. An image might depict a typical room, with three walls, a ceiling and a floor. The researchers then systematically changed the scene: by removing the wall, for instance, or the ceiling. Simultaneously, they monitored participants’ brain activity through…