Integrative and distinctive coding of visual and conceptual object features in the ventral visual stream
- University of Toronto, Canada
- Mount Allison University, Canada
- Rotman Research Institute, Canada
- Queen's University, Canada
Abstract
A significant body of research in cognitive neuroscience is aimed at understanding how object concepts are represented in the human brain. However, it remains unknown whether and where the visual and abstract conceptual features that define an object concept are integrated. We addressed this issue by comparing the neural pattern similarities among object-evoked fMRI responses with behavior-based models that independently captured the visual and conceptual similarities among these stimuli. Our results revealed evidence for distinctive coding of visual features in lateral occipital cortex, and conceptual features in the temporal pole and parahippocampal cortex. By contrast, we found evidence for integrative coding of visual and conceptual object features in perirhinal cortex. The neuroanatomical specificity of this effect was highlighted by results from a searchlight analysis. Taken together, our findings suggest that perirhinal cortex uniquely supports the representation of fully-specified object concepts through the integration of their visual and conceptual features.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Morgan Barense
James S. McDonnell Foundation
- Morgan Barense
Canada Research Chairs
- Morgan Barense
Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation
- Morgan Barense
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (PDF - 502437 - 2017)
- Chris B Martin
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University ofToronto (REB # 23778) and the Research Ethics Board at Baycrest Hospital (REB # 15-06). Informed consent was obtained from each participant before the experiment, including consent to publish anonymized results.
Copyright
© 2018, Martin et al.
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.
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Integrative and distinctive coding of visual and conceptual object features in the ventral visual stream
eLife 7:e31873.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31873
