Bottom-up and top-down computations in word- and face-selective cortex

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Abstract

The ability to read a page of text or recognize a person's face depends on category-selective visual regions in ventral temporal cortex (VTC). To understand how these regions mediate word and face recognition, it is necessary to characterize how stimuli are represented and how this representation is used in the execution of a cognitive task. Here, we show that the response of a category-selective region in VTC can be computed as the degree to which the low-level properties of the stimulus match a category template. Moreover, we show that during execution of a task, the bottom-up representation is scaled by the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and that the level of IPS engagement reflects the cognitive demands of the task. These results provide an account of neural processing in VTC in the form of a model that addresses both bottom-up and top-down effects and quantitatively predicts VTC responses.

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Kendrick N Kay

Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States

For correspondence
kendrick@post.harvard.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6604-9155
Jason D Yeatman

Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, United States

For correspondence
jyeatman@uw.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience

Kendrick N Kay

Washington University in St. Louis

Kendrick N Kay

National Science Foundation (BCS-1551330)

Jason D Yeatman

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Informed written consent was obtained from all subjects, and the experimental protocol was approved by the Washington University in St. Louis Institutional Review Board and the University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.