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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on March 25, 2009
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(11):2746-2754; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp051
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© 2009 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Engagement of Fusiform Cortex and Disengagement of Lateral Occipital Cortex in the Acquisition of Radiological Expertise

Erin M. Harley1, Whitney B. Pope3, J. Pablo Villablanca3, Jeanette Mumford2, Robert Suh3, John C. Mazziotta35, Dieter Enzmann3 and Stephen A. Engel6

1 Exponent Failure Analysis, Bellevue, WA 98007, USA, 2 Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA, 3 Department of Radiological Sciences and Pharmacology, 4 Department of Neurology, 5 Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA, 6 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Address correspondence to Stephen Engel, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, N218 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN, USA. Email: engel{at}umn.edu.

The human visual pathways that are specialized for object recognition stretch from lateral occipital cortex (LO) to the ventral surface of the temporal lobe, including the fusiform gyrus. Plasticity in these pathways supports the acquisition of visual expertise, but precisely how training affects the different regions remains unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activity in both LO and the fusiform gyrus in radiologists as they detected abnormalities in chest radiographs. Activity in the right fusiform face area (FFA) correlated with visual expertise, measured as behavioral performance during scanning. In contrast, activity in left LO correlated negatively with expertise, and the amount of LO that responded to radiographs was smaller in experts than in novices. Activity in the FFA and LO correlated negatively in experts, whereas in novices, the 2 regions showed no stable relationship. Together, these results suggest that the FFA becomes more engaged and left LO less engaged in interpreting radiographic images over the course of training. Achieving expert visual performance may involve suppressing existing neural representations while simultaneously developing others.

Key Words: diagnosis • expert • FFA • radiology • vision


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