title: Investigating the Causal Role of rOFA in Holistic Detection of Mooney Faces and Objects: An fMRI-guided TMS Study.
abstract: The right occipital face area (rOFA) is known to be involved in face discrimination based on local featural information. Whether this region is also involved in global, holistic stimulus processing is not known.
  
  
  
  We used fMRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate whether rOFA is causally implicated in stimulus detection based on holistic processing, by the use of Mooney stimuli.
  
  
  
  Two studies were carried out: In Experiment 1, participants performed a detection task involving Mooney faces and Mooney objects; Mooney stimuli lack distinguishable local features and can be detected solely via holistic processing (i.e. at a global level) with top-down guidance from previously stored representations. Experiment 2 required participants to detect shapes which are recognized via bottom-up integration of local (collinear) Gabor elements and was performed to control for specificity of rOFA's implication in holistic detection.
  
  
  
  In Experiment 1, TMS over rOFA and rLO impaired detection of all stimulus categories, with no category-specific effect. In Experiment 2, shape detection was impaired when TMS was applied over rLO but not over rOFA.
  
  
  
  Our results demonstrate that rOFA is causally implicated in the type of top-down holistic detection required by Mooney stimuli and that such role is not face-selective. In contrast, rOFA does not appear to play a causal role in detection of shapes based on bottom-up integration of local components, demonstrating that its involvement in processing non-face stimuli is specific for holistic processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, 00076 Espoo, Finland; Advanced Magnetic Imaging Centre, Aalto Neuroimaging, OV Lounasmaa Laboratory, School of Science, Aalto University, 00076 Espoo, Finland; BioMag Laboratory, HUS Medical Imaging Center, Helsinki University Central Hospital, 00290 Helsinki, Finland; Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bona
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milan, Italy; Brain Connectivity Center, National Neurological Institute C. Mondino, 27100 Pavia, Italy. Electronic address: zaira.cattaneo@unimib.it.
authors.forename: Zaira
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cattaneo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2HW London, UK. Electronic address: j.silvanto@westminster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Juha
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Silvanto
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Face processing; Holistic detection; Object processing; Occipital face area; Visual cortex; fMRI-guided TMS