A scene-selective region in the superior parietal lobule for visually guided navigation

Growing evidence indicates that the occipital place area (OPA) is involved in "visually guided navigation." Here, we propose that a recently uncovered scene-selective region in the superior parietal lobule is also involved in visually guided navigation. First, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that the superior parietal lobule (SPL) responds significantly more to scene stimuli than to face and object stimuli across two sets of stimuli (i.e. dynamic and static), confirming its scene selectivity. Second, we found that the SPL, like the OPA, processes two kinds of information necessary for visually guided navigation: first-person perspective motion and sense (left/right) information in scenes. Third, resting-state fMRI data revealed that SPL is preferentially connected to OPA, compared to other scene-selective regions, indicating that SPL and OPA are part of the same system. Fourth, analysis of previously published fMRI data showed that SPL, like OPA, responds significantly more while participants perform a visually guided navigation task compared to both a scene categorization task and a baseline task, further supporting our hypothesis in an independent dataset. Taken together, these findings indicate the existence of a new scene-selective region for visually guided navigation and raise interesting questions about the precise role that SPL, compared to OPA, may play within visually guided navigation.