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The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 6, 2025

Investigating Object Representations in the Macaque Dorsal Visual Stream Using Single-unit Recordings
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Hand-Selective Visual Regions Represent How to Grasp 3D Tools: Brain Decoding during Real Actions.

Ethan Knights1, Courtney Mansfield2, Diana Tonin2

  • 1Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 7EF, United Kingdom.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|May 11, 2021
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Summary

Brain regions specialized for hands, not tools, automatically process typical tool grasping actions. This challenges previous assumptions about how the brain represents tool use.

Keywords:
body representationcategory selectivitygraspingmultivariate pattern analysistool use

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neuroimaging

Background:

  • Previous neuroimaging studies often used static images of tools and hands, rarely involving real actions.
  • These studies identified visual responses in occipitotemporal and parietal cortices for viewing tools/hands, assumed to reflect action processing.
  • Direct investigation of action processing in these brain regions, especially during real tool grasping, has been limited.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate brain responses in category-selective areas during real tool grasping actions.
  • To determine if grasp typicality (appropriate way to grasp a tool) can be decoded from brain activity.
  • To examine whether these representations are specific to tools versus non-tools and hand-selective versus tool-selective regions.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used with participants grasping 3D tools.
  • Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was employed to decode grasp typicality representations.
  • Comparisons were made between tool actions and biomechanically matched non-tool actions, and between hand-selective and tool-selective brain areas.

Main Results:

  • Grasp typicality was decodable from hand-selective areas in occipitotemporal and parietal cortices, but not tool-selective areas.
  • These effects were specific to actions with tools and not observed with control non-tools.
  • Decoding of grasp typicality was significantly higher in hand-selective than tool-selective parietal regions, even when participants were naive to object category.

Conclusions:

  • Typical tool grasping representations are automatically evoked in visual regions specialized for the human hand.
  • This finding challenges the assumption that tool-viewing activations reflect sensorimotor processing linked to manipulation.
  • The human hand's visual representation appears crucial for processing the typicality of tool grasping actions.