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Analyzing Neural Activity and Connectivity Using Intracranial EEG Data with SPM Software
Published on: October 30, 2018
Triple dissociation of faces, bodies, and objects in extrastriate cortex
David Pitcher1, Lucie Charles, Joseph T Devlin
1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive, Perceptual, and Brain Sciences, University College London, UK. d.pitcher@ucl.ac.uk
Current Biology : CB
|February 10, 2009
Summary
Neuroscience research shows distinct brain areas specialize in recognizing specific categories like faces, bodies, and objects. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) confirmed that disrupting these specialized visual cortex regions impairs recognition of only their preferred category.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Debate exists on whether specific brain regions perform distinct cognitive functions or if functions are distributed.
- Two main theories: the distributed view (overlapping representations) and the modular view (functionally segregated areas).
- Visual object recognition is a key area for this debate, particularly concerning how the brain discriminates between different object categories.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the competing distributed and modular theories of cortical function in visual object recognition.
- To investigate whether category-specific brain regions in the extrastriate cortex are specialized for discriminating particular object categories.
- To determine if disrupting these areas selectively impairs the discrimination of their preferred categories.
Main Methods:
- Utilized transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt neural activity in specific brain regions.
- Focused TMS on three functionally localized areas in the extrastriate cortex: right occipital face area (rOFA), right extrastriate body area (rEBA), and right lateral occipital area (rLO).
- Participants performed visual discrimination tasks involving faces, bodies, and objects while TMS was applied over these targeted areas.
Main Results:
- Disrupting the right occipital face area (rOFA) selectively impaired face discrimination.
- Disrupting the right extrastriate body area (rEBA) selectively impaired body discrimination.
- Disrupting the right lateral occipital area (rLO) selectively impaired object discrimination, with no cross-category impairment observed.
Conclusions:
- The findings strongly support a modular account of visual object recognition.
- Category-selective areas in the extrastriate cortex are specialized and contribute exclusively to the discrimination of their preferred object categories.
- This provides evidence for functional segregation within the visual cortex for processing different types of objects.
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