title: Functional coupling between frontoparietal and occipitotemporal pathways during action and perception.
abstract: Several lines of evidence point to areas in the occipitotemporal pathway as being critical in the processes of visual perception and object recognition. Much less appreciated, however, is the role that this pathway plays in object-related processing for the purposes of visually guided action. Here, using functional MRI (fMRI) and functional connectivity (FC) measures, we examined interactions between areas in frontoparietal cortex (FPC) involved in grasping, reaching, eye movements, and tool use and areas in occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) involved in object-, face-, scene-, body-, tool-, and motion-related processing, both during the performance of sensorimotor and visual-perceptual tasks, as well as during passive fixation (resting-state). Cluster analysis of regional time course data identified correspondence in the patterns of FPC and OTC connectivity during the visual-perceptual tasks and rest that both tended to segregate regions along traditional dorsal/ventral pathway boundaries. During the sensorimotor tasks, however, we observed a notable separation in functional coupling between ventral-medial and ventral-lateral regions of OTC, with several of the latter areas often being clustered together with sensorimotor-defined areas in parietal cortex. These findings indicate that the functional coupling of ventral-lateral OTC areas to dorsal parietal and ventral-medial structures is flexible and task-dependent, and suggests that regions in lateral occipital cortex, in particular, may play an important role in mediating interactions between the dorsal and ventral pathways during tasks involving sensorimotor control.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Electronic address: rhutchison@FAS.Harvard.edu.
authors.forename: R Matthew
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Hutchison
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada; Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada; Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: gallivan@queensu.ca.
authors.forename: Jason P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Gallivan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Action; Functional connectivity; Perception; Resting-state; Sensorimotor; fMRI