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The relative contributions of visual and semantic information in the neural representation of object categories

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posted on 2019-10-31, 15:58 authored by Lindsay W. Victoria, John PylesJohn Pyles, Michael TarrMichael Tarr
Introduction
How do multiple sources of information interact to form mental representations of object categories? It is commonly held that object categories reflect the integration of perceptual features and semantic/knowledge‐based features. To explore the relative contributions of these two sources of information, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify regions involved in the representation object categories with shared visual and/or semantic features.

Methods
Participants (N = 20) viewed a series of objects that varied in their degree of visual and semantic overlap in the MRI scanner. We used a blocked adaptation design to identify sensitivity to visual and semantic features in a priori visual processing regions and in a distributed network of object processing regions with an exploratory whole‐brain analysis.

Results
Somewhat surprisingly, within higher‐order visual processing regions—specifically lateral occipital cortex (LOC)—we did not obtain any difference in neural adaptation for shared visual versus semantic category membership. More broadly, both visual and semantic information affected a distributed network of independently identified category‐selective regions. Adaptation was seen a whole‐brain network of processing regions in response to visual similarity and semantic similarity; specifically, the angular gyrus (AnG) adapted to visual similarity and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) adapted to both visual and semantic similarity.

Conclusions
Our findings suggest that perceptual features help organize mental categories throughout the object processing hierarchy. Most notably, visual similarity also influenced adaptation in nonvisual brain regions (i.e., AnG and DMPFC). We conclude that category‐relevant visual features are maintained in higher‐order conceptual representations and visual information plays an important role in both the acquisition and neural representation of conceptual object categories.

Funding

National Institute of Mental Health. Grant Number: R01 MH084195

National Science Foundation. Grant Number: SMA-1041755

National Institute on Drug Abuse. Grant Number: R90 DA022761

National Institutes of Health

History

Publisher Statement

This is the published version of Victoria, L. W., Pyles, J. A., & Tarr, M. J. (2019). The relative contributions of visual and semantic information in the neural representation of object categories. Brain and Behavior, 9(10). doi: 10.1002/brb3.1373 © 2019 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This article was published open access using the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries' Article Processing Charge (APC) fund

Date

2019-09-27

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