IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2011 Oct;23(10):2878-91. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2011.21629. Epub 2011 Jan 25.
Ventral occipito-temporal cortex is known to play a major role in visual object recognition. Still unknown is whether object familiarity and semantic domain are critical factors in its functional organization. Most models assume a functional locus where exemplars of familiar categories are represented: the structural description system. On the assumption that familiarity should modulate the effect of visual noise on form recognition, we attempted to individualize the structural description system by scanning healthy subjects while they looked at familiar (living and nonliving things) and novel 3-D objects, either with increasing or decreasing visual noise. Familiarity modulated the visual noise effect (particularly when familiar items were living things), revealing a substrate for the structural description system in right occipito-temporal cortex. These regions also responded preferentially to living as compared to nonliving items. Overall, these results suggest that living items are particularly reliant on the structural description system.
腹侧枕颞叶皮层在视觉物体识别中起着主要作用。目前尚不清楚的是，物体的熟悉度和语义领域是否是其功能组织的关键因素。大多数模型假设存在一个功能位置，在这个位置上，熟悉类别的范例被表示出来：结构描述系统。基于熟悉度应该调节视觉噪声对形状识别的影响的假设，我们试图通过扫描健康受试者来个性化结构描述系统，当他们观察熟悉的（有生命和无生命的东西）和新的 3-D 物体时，无论视觉噪声增加还是减少。熟悉度调节了视觉噪声的影响（特别是当熟悉的物品是有生命的东西时），揭示了右枕颞叶皮层中结构描述系统的基础。这些区域也更喜欢有生命的东西而不是无生命的东西。总的来说，这些结果表明，有生命的物品特别依赖于结构描述系统。
