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The Lateral Occipital Complex shows no net response to object familiarity.

ABSTRACT: In 1995, Malach et al. discovered an area whose fMRI BOLD response was greater when viewing intact, familiar objects than when viewing their scrambled versions (resembling texture). Since then hundreds of studies have explored this late visual region termed the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC), which is now known to be critical for shape perception (James, Culham, Humphrey, Milner, & Goodale, 2003). Malach et al. (1995) discounted a role of familiarity by showing that "abstract" Henry Moore sculptures, unfamiliar to the subjects, also activated this region. This characterization of LOC as a region that responds to shape independently of familiarity has been accepted but never tested with control of the same low-level features. We assessed LOC's response to objects that had identical parts in two different arrangements, one familiar and the other novel. Malach was correct: There is no net effect of familiarity in LOC. However, a multivoxel correlation analysis showed that LOC does distinguish familiar from novel objects.

SUBMITTER: Margalit E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5024672 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Lateral Occipital Complex shows no net response to object familiarity.

Margalit Eshed E Shah Manan P MP Tjan Bosco S BS Biederman Irving I Keller Brenton B Brenner Rorry R

Journal of vision 20160901 11

In 1995, Malach et al. discovered an area whose fMRI BOLD response was greater when viewing intact, familiar objects than when viewing their scrambled versions (resembling texture). Since then hundreds of studies have explored this late visual region termed the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC), which is now known to be critical for shape perception (James, Culham, Humphrey, Milner, & Goodale, 2003). Malach et al. (1995) discounted a role of familiarity by showing that "abstract" Henry Moore sculp ...[more]

PMID: 27599373

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Project description:IntroductionThere is mounting evidence that visual perception abnormalities in schizophrenia are partly explained by a dysfunction of the lateral occipital complex (LO). We previously demonstrated that schizophrenia patients had broader topography and reduced magnitude of activity of LO. However, the functional connectivity of LO with other brain regions during visual perception has not been directly investigated in schizophrenia.Materials and methodsEighteen patients with schizophrenia and eighteen matched controls performed a backward masking task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Stimulus onset asynchronies were manipulated to change the level of target visibility. To examine connectivity with LO function we conducted psychophysiological interactions (PPI) analyses using: 1) a region of interest (ROI) approach and 2) a whole brain analysis. ROIs were defined based on a contrast of trials on which a target was presented versus null trials in which no stimuli were presented.ResultsEleven ROIs were identified. Both groups showed similar strength of coupling between LO and the 11 ROIs when visibility was not taken into account. Healthy controls showed clear changes in coupling between LO and prefrontal and parietal regions as a function of target visibility (higher coupling with more visible targets). In comparison, patients showed reduced dynamic coupling with LO in the right superior frontal gyrus (significant after correcting for multiple comparisons) and a trend for reduced coupling in the left precuneus and left inferior frontal regions. Whole brain analysis identified additional regions that showed dynamic coupling with LO in healthy controls, but not in patients.DiscussionThe increased coupling between LO and higher-level parietal and prefrontal regions during visual awareness in healthy controls likely reflects visual reentrant processing. The lack of modulation of coupling between LO and key prefrontal and parietal regions found in schizophrenia may partly reflect abnormalities in LO tuning. The altered LO coupling may contribute to visual perception abnormalities in schizophrenia.

Dataset Information

The Lateral Occipital Complex shows no net response to object familiarity.

Publications

The Lateral Occipital Complex shows no net response to object familiarity.

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