Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2011 Aug;21(8):1738-46. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhq240. Epub 2010 Dec 8.
Regions tuned to individual visual categories, such as faces and objects, have been discovered in the later stages of the ventral visual pathway in the cortex. But most visual experience is composed of scenes, where multiple objects are interacting. Such interactions are readily described by prepositions or verb forms, for example, a bird perched on a birdhouse. At what stage in the pathway does sensitivity to such interactions arise? Here we report that object pairs shown as interacting, compared with their side-by-side depiction (e.g., a bird besides a birdhouse), elicit greater activity in the lateral occipital complex, the earliest cortical region where shape is distinguished from texture. Novelty of the interactions magnified this gain, an effect that was absent in the side-by-side depictions. Scene-like relations are thus likely achieved simultaneously with the specification of object shape.
在大脑皮层的腹侧视觉通路的后期阶段，已经发现了针对个别视觉类别的调谐区域，例如面部和物体。但是，大多数视觉体验都是由多个物体相互作用的场景组成。这种相互作用可以很容易地用介词或动词形式来描述，例如，一只鸟栖息在鸟舍上。在通路的哪个阶段会产生对这种相互作用的敏感性？在这里，我们报告说，与并排显示（例如，一只鸟在鸟舍旁边）相比，以相互作用方式显示的物体对侧枕叶复合体的活动更大，而该区域是最早区分形状和纹理的皮质区域。这种增益的放大作用是由于相互作用的新颖性引起的，而并排显示则没有这种作用。因此，场景般的关系可能与物体形状的指定同时实现。
