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J Neurophysiol (July 25, 2007). doi:10.1152/jn.00438.2007
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Submitted on April 17, 2007
Accepted on July 21, 2007

Position selectivity in scene- and object-responsive occipitotemporal regions

Sean P MacEvoy1* and Russell Alan Epstein2

1 Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
2 Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: macevoy{at}psych.upenn.edu.

Complex visual scenes preferentially activate several areas of the human brain, including the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the retrosplenial complex (RSC), and the transverse occipital sulcus (TOS). The sensitivity of neurons in these regions to the retinal position of stimuli is unknown, but could provide insight into their roles in scene perception and navigation. To address this issue, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure neural responses evoked by sequences of scenes and objects confined to either the left or right visual hemifields. We also measured the level of adaptation produced when stimuli were either presented first in one hemifield and then repeated in the opposite hemifield, or repeated in the same hemifield. Although overall responses in the PPA, RSC and TOS tended to be higher for contralateral stimuli than for ipsilateral stimuli, all three regions exhibited position-invariant adaptation, insofar as the magnitude of adaptation did not depend on whether stimuli were repeated in the same or opposite hemifields. In contrast, object-selective regions showed significantly greater adaptation when objects were repeated in the same hemifield. These results suggest that neuronal receptive fields (RFs) in scene-selective regions span the vertical meridian, while RFs in object-selective regions do not. The PPA, RSC, and TOS may support scene perception and navigation by maintaining stable representations of large-scale features of the visual environment that are insensitive to the shifts in retinal stimulation that occur frequently during normal vision.




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