Department of Neuroradiology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
PLoS One. 2011 Jan 24;6(1):e16202. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016202.
Our object recognition abilities, a direct product of our experience with objects, are fine-tuned to perfection. Left temporal and lateral areas along the dorsal, action related stream, as well as left infero-temporal areas along the ventral, object related stream are engaged in object recognition. Here we show that expertise modulates the activity of dorsal areas in the recognition of man-made objects with clearly specified functions. Expert chess players were faster than chess novices in identifying chess objects and their functional relations. Experts' advantage was domain-specific as there were no differences between groups in a control task featuring geometrical shapes. The pattern of eye movements supported the notion that experts' extensive knowledge about domain objects and their functions enabled superior recognition even when experts were not directly fixating the objects of interest. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) related exclusively the areas along the dorsal stream to chess specific object recognition. Besides the commonly involved left temporal and parietal lateral brain areas, we found that only in experts homologous areas on the right hemisphere were also engaged in chess specific object recognition. Based on these results, we discuss whether skilled object recognition does not only involve a more efficient version of the processes found in non-skilled recognition, but also qualitatively different cognitive processes which engage additional brain areas.
我们的物体识别能力是我们对物体经验的直接产物，已经达到了完美的程度。左侧颞叶和侧部沿背侧，与动作相关的流，以及左侧下颞叶沿腹侧，与物体相关的流，都参与了物体识别。在这里，我们表明，专业知识调节了背侧区域在识别具有明确功能的人造物体时的活动。专家国际象棋选手在识别国际象棋物体及其功能关系方面比新手更快。专家的优势是特定于领域的，因为在一个以几何形状为特征的控制任务中，两组之间没有差异。眼动模式支持这样一种观点，即专家对领域物体及其功能的广泛知识使他们即使不在直接注视感兴趣的物体时，也能进行更好的识别。功能磁共振成像（fMRI）仅将背侧流沿线的区域与特定于国际象棋的物体识别相关联。除了常见的涉及左侧颞叶和顶叶外侧的大脑区域外，我们还发现，只有在专家中，右侧的同源区域也参与了特定于国际象棋的物体识别。基于这些结果，我们讨论了熟练的物体识别是否不仅涉及到在非熟练识别中发现的过程的更有效版本，而且还涉及到涉及额外大脑区域的定性不同的认知过程。
