Visuo-haptic object-related activation in the ventral visual pathway.
The ventral pathway is involved in primate visual object recognition. In humans, a central stage in this pathway is an occipito-temporal region termed the lateral occipital complex (LOC), which is preferentially activated by visual objects compared to scrambled images or textures. However, objects have characteristic attributes (such as three-dimensional shape) that can be perceived both visually and haptically. Therefore, object-related brain areas may hold a representation of objects in both modalities. Using fMRI to map object-related brain regions, we found robust and consistent somatosensory activation in the occipito-temporal cortex. This region showed clear preference for objects compared to textures in both modalities. Most somatosensory object-selective voxels overlapped a part of the visual object-related region LOC. Thus, we suggest that neuronal populations in the occipito-temporal cortex may constitute a multimodal object-related network.
Neurobiology Department, Life Science Institute and Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
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Amedi
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Malach
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Hendler
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Peled
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Zohary
D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D013236:Stereognosis / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000378:metabolism*