Dataset Information

Interaction envelope: Local spatial representations of objects at all scales in scene-selective regions.

ABSTRACT: While several cortical regions have been highlighted for their category selectivity (e.g., scene-selective regions like the parahippocampal place area, object selective regions like the lateral occipital complex), a growing trend in cognitive neuroscience has been to investigate what particular perceptual properties these regions calculate. Classical scene-selective regions have been particularly targeted in recent work as being sensitive to object size or other related properties. Here we test to which extent these regions are sensitive to spatial information of stimuli at any size. We introduce the spatial object property of "interaction envelope," defined as the space through which a user transverses to interact with an object. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we examined activity in a comprehensive set of perceptual regions of interest for when human participants viewed object images varying along the dimensions of interaction envelope and physical size. Importantly, we controlled for confounding perceptual and semantic object properties. We find that scene-selective regions are in fact sensitive to object interaction envelope for small, manipulable objects regardless of real-world size and task. Meanwhile, small-scale entity regions maintain selectivity to stimulus physical size. These results indicate that regions traditionally associated with scene processing may not be solely sensitive to larger object and scene information, but instead are calculating local spatial information of objects and scenes of all sizes.

SUBMITTER: Bainbridge WA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4655824 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Interaction envelope: Local spatial representations of objects at all scales in scene-selective regions.

Bainbridge Wilma Alice WA Oliva Aude A

NeuroImage 20150730

While several cortical regions have been highlighted for their category selectivity (e.g., scene-selective regions like the parahippocampal place area, object selective regions like the lateral occipital complex), a growing trend in cognitive neuroscience has been to investigate what particular perceptual properties these regions calculate. Classical scene-selective regions have been particularly targeted in recent work as being sensitive to object size or other related properties. Here we test ...[more]

PMID: 26236029

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Project description:In complex real-world scenes, image content is conveyed by a large collection of intertwined visual features. The visual system disentangles these features in order to extract information about image content. Here, we investigate the role of one integral component: the content of spatial frequencies in an image. Specifically, we measure the amount of image content carried by low versus high spatial frequencies for the representation of real-world scenes in scene-selective regions of human visual cortex. To this end, we attempted to decode scene categories from the brain activity patterns of participants viewing scene images that contained the full spatial frequency spectrum, only low spatial frequencies, or only high spatial frequencies, all carefully controlled for contrast and luminance. Contrary to the findings from numerous behavioral studies and computational models that have highlighted how low spatial frequencies preferentially encode image content, decoding of scene categories from the scene-selective brain regions, including the parahippocampal place area (PPA), was significantly more accurate for high than low spatial frequency images. In fact, decoding accuracy was just as high for high spatial frequency images as for images containing the full spatial frequency spectrum in scene-selective areas PPA, RSC, OPA and object selective area LOC. We also found an interesting dissociation between the posterior and anterior subdivisions of PPA: categories were decodable from both high and low spatial frequency scenes in posterior PPA but only from high spatial frequency scenes in anterior PPA; and spatial frequency was explicitly decodable from posterior but not anterior PPA. Our results are consistent with recent findings that line drawings, which consist almost entirely of high spatial frequencies, elicit a neural representation of scene categories that is equivalent to that of full-spectrum color photographs. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the importance of high spatial frequencies for conveying the content of complex real-world scenes.

Dataset Information

Interaction envelope: Local spatial representations of objects at all scales in scene-selective regions.

Publications

Interaction envelope: Local spatial representations of objects at all scales in scene-selective regions.

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