McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
J Neurosci. 2013 Jan 23;33(4):1331-6a. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4081-12.2013.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging has revealed a set of regions selectively engaged in visual scene processing: the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the retrosplenial complex (RSC), and a region around the transverse occipital sulcus (previously known as "TOS"), here renamed the "occipital place area" (OPA). Are these regions not only preferentially activated by, but also causally involved in scene perception? Although past neuropsychological data imply a causal role in scene processing for PPA and RSC, no such evidence exists for OPA. Thus, to test the causal role of OPA in human adults, we delivered transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the right OPA (rOPA) or the nearby face-selective right occipital face area (rOFA) while participants performed fine-grained perceptual discrimination tasks on scenes or faces. TMS over rOPA impaired discrimination of scenes but not faces, while TMS over rOFA impaired discrimination of faces but not scenes. In a second experiment, we delivered TMS to rOPA, or the object-selective right lateral occipital complex (rLOC), while participants performed categorization tasks involving scenes and objects. TMS over rOPA impaired categorization accuracy of scenes but not objects, while TMS over rLOC impaired categorization accuracy of objects but not scenes. These findings provide the first evidence that OPA is causally involved in scene processing, and further show that this causal role is selective for scene perception. Our findings illuminate the functional architecture of the scene perception system, and also argue against the "distributed coding" view in which each category-selective region participates in the representation of all objects.
旁海马体位置区域（PPA）、后扣带回复合体（RSC）和围绕横向枕沟的区域（以前称为“TOS”），现更名为“枕部位置区域”（OPA）。这些区域不仅优先被激活，而且还参与场景感知吗？尽管过去的神经心理学数据表明 PPA 和 RSC 在场景处理中具有因果作用，但 OPA 没有这样的证据。因此，为了测试 OPA 在成年人类中的因果作用，我们在参与者对场景或面孔进行精细感知辨别任务时，对右侧 OPA（rOPA）或附近的面孔选择性右侧枕叶面孔区域（rOFA）施加经颅磁刺激（TMS）。rOPA 上的 TMS 损害了场景的辨别能力，但不损害面孔的辨别能力，而 rOFA 上的 TMS 损害了面孔的辨别能力，但不损害场景的辨别能力。在第二项实验中，我们在参与者进行涉及场景和物体的分类任务时，对 rOPA 或物体选择性右侧外侧枕叶复合体（rLOC）施加 TMS。rOPA 上的 TMS 损害了场景的分类准确性，但不损害物体的分类准确性，而 rLOC 上的 TMS 损害了物体的分类准确性，但不损害场景的分类准确性。这些发现提供了第一个证据，证明 OPA 因果参与场景处理，并且进一步表明这种因果作用是场景感知的选择性。我们的发现阐明了场景感知系统的功能架构，并且也反对“分布式编码”观点，即每个类别选择性区域都参与所有物体的表示。
