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Poster A154 in Poster Session A - Tuesday, August 6, 2024, 4:15 – 6:15 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Core Neural Dimensions of Functionally Selective Areas in the Human Visual Cortex
Leonard E. van Dyck1,2 (), Martin N. Hebart1,2,3, Katharina Dobs1,3; 1Justus Liebig University Giessen, 2Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 3Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior, Universities of Marburg, Giessen, and Darmstadt
Prior research has extensively documented functional selectivity for categories within visual cortical areas, primarily by contrasting neural responses to images from various categories. However, such categorical approaches are less suitable to capture the diversity of neural representations within these areas. Do category-selective areas encode holistic categories, or are they instead tuned to multifaceted features? To address this question, we employed non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) for analyzing human fMRI responses to natural images in face-, body-, and scene-selective areas, which uncovered a consistent set of interpretable neural dimensions across participants. These dimensions not only aligned with the areas’ respective category preferences, but also revealed finer within-category distinctions, indicating selective tuning to diverse visual input features. Mapping these dimensions onto the cortical surface showed both clustered and distributed topographies, which accounted for overlaps between areas. Our results suggest that category-selective areas show multifaceted feature tuning, challenging traditional views and highlighting the complex interplay of neural dimensions in encoding visual information.
Keywords: fMRI functional selectivity visual cortex neural representations