Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on November 21, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(7):1676-1694; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm196
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A Stable Topography of Selectivity for Unfamiliar Shape Classes in Monkey Inferior Temporal Cortex
1 McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA, 2 Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, K.U. Leuven, B3000 Leuven, Belgium, 3 Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA, 4 Laboratorium voor Neuro- & Psychofysiologie, K.U. Leuven Medical School, Leuven B3001, Belgium
Address correspondence to Hans P. Op de Beeck, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, K.U.Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: hans.opdebeeck{at}psy.kuleuven.be.
The inferior temporal (IT) cortex in monkeys plays a central role in visual object recognition and learning. Previous studies have observed patches in IT cortex with strong selectivity for highly familiar object classes (e.g., faces), but the principles behind this functional organization are largely unknown due to the many properties that distinguish different object classes. To unconfound shape from meaning and memory, we scanned monkeys with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed classes of initially novel objects. Our data revealed a topography of selectivity for these novel object classes across IT cortex. We found that this selectivity topography was highly reproducible and remarkably stable across a 3-month interval during which monkeys were extensively trained to discriminate among exemplars within one of the object classes. Furthermore, this selectivity topography was largely unaffected by changes in behavioral task and object retinal position, both of which preserve shape. In contrast, it was strongly influenced by changes in object shape. The topography was partially related to, but not explained by, the previously described pattern of face selectivity. Together, these results suggest that IT cortex contains a large-scale map of shape that is largely independent of meaning, familiarity, and behavioral task.
Key Words: categorization • fMRI • learning • object recognition • primate • visual perception
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