Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Neuroimage. 2023 Apr 1;269:119935. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119935. Epub 2023 Feb 9.
Human neuroimaging studies have revealed a dedicated cortical system for visual scene processing. But what is a "scene"? Here, we use a stimulus-driven approach to identify a stimulus feature that selectively drives cortical scene processing. Specifically, using fMRI data from BOLD5000, we examined the images that elicited the greatest response in the cortical scene processing system, and found that there is a common "vertical luminance gradient" (VLG), with the top half of a scene image brighter than the bottom half; moreover, across the entire set of images, VLG systematically increases with the neural response in the scene-selective regions (Study 1). Thus, we hypothesized that VLG is a stimulus feature that selectively engages cortical scene processing, and directly tested the role of VLG in driving cortical scene selectivity using tightly controlled VLG stimuli (Study 2). Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that the scene-selective cortical regions-but not an object-selective region or early visual cortex-responded significantly more to images of VLG over control stimuli with minimal VLG. Interestingly, such selectivity was also found for images with an "inverted" VLG, resembling the luminance gradient in night scenes. Finally, we also tested the behavioral relevance of VLG for visual scene recognition (Study 3); we found that participants even categorized tightly controlled stimuli of both upright and inverted VLG to be a place more than an object, indicating that VLG is also used for behavioral scene recognition. Taken together, these results reveal that VLG is a stimulus feature that selectively engages cortical scene processing, and provide evidence for a recent proposal that visual scenes can be characterized by a set of common and unique visual features.
人类神经影像学研究揭示了一个专门用于视觉场景处理的皮质系统。但是，什么是“场景”呢？在这里，我们使用刺激驱动的方法来确定一个能选择性地驱动皮质场景处理的刺激特征。具体来说，我们使用 fMRI 数据从 BOLD5000 中检查了在皮质场景处理系统中引起最大反应的图像，发现存在一种常见的“垂直亮度梯度”（VLG），场景图像的上半部分比下半部分更亮；此外，在整个图像集中，VLG 与场景选择区域的神经反应呈系统增加（研究 1）。因此，我们假设 VLG 是一种刺激特征，可选择性地参与皮质场景处理，并使用严格控制的 VLG 刺激直接测试 VLG 在驱动皮质场景选择性中的作用（研究 2）。与我们的假设一致，我们发现场景选择的皮质区域——而不是物体选择区域或早期视觉皮质——对 VLG 图像的反应明显比对最小 VLG 的控制刺激更强烈。有趣的是，对于具有“倒置”VLG 的图像，也发现了这种选择性，类似于夜景中的亮度梯度。最后，我们还测试了 VLG 对视觉场景识别的行为相关性（研究 3）；我们发现，即使是对严格控制的垂直和倒置 VLG 刺激，参与者也将其归类为一个地方而不是一个物体，这表明 VLG 也用于行为场景识别。总之，这些结果表明，VLG 是一种刺激特征，可选择性地参与皮质场景处理，并为最近提出的视觉场景可以用一组通用和独特的视觉特征来描述的观点提供了证据。
