TY - JOUR
T1 - Spatiotemporal object continuity in human ventral visual cortex
AU - Yi, Do Joon
AU - Turk-Browne, Nicholas B.
AU - Flombaum, Jonathan I.
AU - Kim, Min Shik
AU - Scholl, Brian J.
AU - Chun, Marvin M.
PY - 2008/7/1
Y1 - 2008/7/1
N2 - Coherent visual experience requires that objects be represented as the same persisting individuals over time and motion. Cognitive science research has identified a powerful principle that guides such processing: Objects must trace continuous paths through space and time. Little is known, however, about how neural representations of objects, typically defined by visual features, are influenced by spatiotemporal continuity. Here, we report the consequences of spatiotemporally continuous vs. discontinuous motion on perceptual representations in human ventral visual cortex. In experiments using both dynamic occlusion and apparent motion, face-selective cortical regions exhibited significantly less activation when faces were repeated in continuous vs. discontinuous trajectories, suggesting that discontinuity caused featurally identical objects to be represented as different individuals. These results indicate that spatiotemporal continuity modulates neural representations of object identity, influencing judgments of object persistence even in the most staunchly "featural" areas of ventral visual cortex.
AB - Coherent visual experience requires that objects be represented as the same persisting individuals over time and motion. Cognitive science research has identified a powerful principle that guides such processing: Objects must trace continuous paths through space and time. Little is known, however, about how neural representations of objects, typically defined by visual features, are influenced by spatiotemporal continuity. Here, we report the consequences of spatiotemporally continuous vs. discontinuous motion on perceptual representations in human ventral visual cortex. In experiments using both dynamic occlusion and apparent motion, face-selective cortical regions exhibited significantly less activation when faces were repeated in continuous vs. discontinuous trajectories, suggesting that discontinuity caused featurally identical objects to be represented as different individuals. These results indicate that spatiotemporal continuity modulates neural representations of object identity, influencing judgments of object persistence even in the most staunchly "featural" areas of ventral visual cortex.
KW - Functional MRI
KW - Object persistence
KW - Repetition attenuation
KW - Spatiotemporal continuity
KW - Visual tracking
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.0802525105
DO - 10.1073/pnas.0802525105
M3 - Article
C2 - 18591658
AN - SCOPUS:48249121561
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 105
SP - 8840
EP - 8845
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 26
ER -