Ramirez Jesus Garcia, Vanhoyland Michael, Ratan Murty N A, Decramer Thomas, Van Paesschen Wim, Bracci Stefania, Op de Beeck Hans, Kanwisher Nancy, Janssen Peter, Theys Tom
Research group Experimental Neurosurgery and Neuroanatomy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven B-3000, Belgium.
Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology, Department of Neurosciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Leuven Brain Institute, Leuven B-3000, Belgium.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Dec 17;121(51):e2408871121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2408871121. Epub 2024 Dec 9.
Body perception plays a fundamental role in social cognition. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying this process in humans remain elusive given the spatiotemporal constraints of functional imaging. Here, we present intracortical recordings of single- and multiunit spiking activity in two epilepsy surgery patients in or near the extrastriate body area, a critical region for body perception. Our recordings revealed a strong preference for human bodies over a large range of control stimuli. Notably, body selectivity was driven by a distinct selectivity for body parts. The observed body selectivity generalized to nonphotographic depictions of bodies including silhouettes and stick figures. Overall, our study provides unique neural data that bridge the gap between human neuroimaging and macaque electrophysiology studies, laying a solid foundation for computational models of human body processing.
身体感知在社会认知中起着基础性作用。然而，鉴于功能成像的时空限制，人类这一过程背后的神经机制仍不清楚。在此，我们展示了两名癫痫手术患者在纹外体区或其附近的单神经元和多神经元放电活动的皮层内记录，纹外体区是身体感知的关键区域。我们的记录显示，在一系列对照刺激中，对人体有着强烈的偏好。值得注意的是，身体选择性是由对身体部位的独特选择性驱动的。观察到的身体选择性推广到包括轮廓和简笔画在内的非照片形式的身体描绘。总体而言，我们的研究提供了独特的神经数据，弥合了人类神经成像与猕猴电生理研究之间的差距，为人体处理的计算模型奠定了坚实基础。
