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1 Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kalanit{at}psych.stanford.edu.
The lateral occipital complex (LOC) responds preferentially to objects compared to random stimuli or textures independent of the visual cue. However, it is unknown whether the LOC (or other cortical regions) are involved in the processing of edges or global surfaces without shape information. Here, we examined processing of (1) global shape, (2) disconnected edges without a global shape, and (3) global surfaces without edges vs. random stimuli across motion and stereo cues. The LOC responded more strongly to global shapes than edges, surfaces or random stimuli, for both motion and stereo cues, but its responses to local edges or global surfaces were not different than random stimuli. This suggests that the LOC processes shapes, not edges or surfaces. LOC also responded more strongly to objects than holes with the same shape, suggesting sensitivity to border ownership. V7 responded more strongly to edges than surfaces or random stimuli for both motion and stereo cues, while V3a and V4 preferred motion-edges. Finally, a region in the caudal intra-parietal sulcus (cIPS) responded more strongly to stereo versus motion, and to stereo-surfaces versus random stereo, (but not to motion-surfaces versus random-motion). Thus, we found evidence for cue-specific responses to surfaces in the cIPS, both cue-specific and cue-independent responses to edges in intermediate visual areas and shape-selective responses across multiple cues in the LOC. Overall, these data suggest that integration of visual information across multiple cues is mainly achieved at the level of shape and underscore LOC's role in shape computations.
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