Processing of natural scenes in the human pulvinar

Theories of high-level visual processing and object recognition have typically focused on ventral visual cortex, often overlooking potential contributions of subcortical structures. The pulvinar, via extensive connections with visual cortex, is well-positioned to play a role in high-level vision. Here, we investigated how the pulvinar represents visual information using a high-resolution 7 T fMRI dataset of responses to tens of thousands of natural scenes. Encoding models targeting different stimulus features revealed a pulvinar region selective for bodies and faces presented in the contralateral visual hemifield. Complementary model-free analyses demonstrated that this region is co-active with body- and face-selective cortical areas during natural scene viewing. These findings challenge cortico-centric models of object vision by demonstrating that principles of cortical organization, including functional clustering and hierarchical organization, also manifest in subcortex. Moreover, they highlight the value of using naturalistic stimuli to probe visual function.