Non-holistic coding of objects in lateral occipital complex with and without attention

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Visual Perception

Background:

• Debate exists on whether visual object recognition relies on part-based or holistic (view-based) representations.
• Previous studies on viewpoint invariance yielded conflicting results, with attention potentially influencing object representation format.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the representational format of objects in the human lateral occipital complex (LOC).
• To determine if object representation format in the LOC is dependent on attentional resources.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA).
• Participants viewed intact and half-split objects under attended and unattended conditions.
• Cross-classification analysis was used to assess information preservation between object conditions.

Main Results:

• Object information in activation patterns generalized equally between intact and split objects.
• This generalization between intact and split objects was not modulated by attention.
• The LOC maintains object-related information in a format that is preserved across different object configurations.

Conclusions:

• The lateral occipital complex (LOC) utilizes a non-holistic (part-based) representational format for objects.
• This part-based coding is operational regardless of whether attention is directed towards the object.