Distributed representations of behaviour-derived object dimensions in the human visual system

Oliver Contier (), Chris I. Baker and Martin N. Hebart
Additional contact information
Oliver Contier: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Chris I. Baker: National Institutes of Health
Martin N. Hebart: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Nature Human Behaviour, 2024, vol. 8, issue 11, 2179-2193

Abstract: Abstract Object vision is commonly thought to involve a hierarchy of brain regions processing increasingly complex image features, with high-level visual cortex supporting object recognition and categorization. However, object vision supports diverse behavioural goals, suggesting basic limitations of this category-centric framework. To address these limitations, we mapped a series of dimensions derived from a large-scale analysis of human similarity judgements directly onto the brain. Our results reveal broadly distributed representations of behaviourally relevant information, demonstrating selectivity to a wide variety of novel dimensions while capturing known selectivities for visual features and categories. Behaviour-derived dimensions were superior to categories at predicting brain responses, yielding mixed selectivity in much of visual cortex and sparse selectivity in category-selective clusters. This framework reconciles seemingly disparate findings regarding regional specialization, explaining category selectivity as a special case of sparse response profiles among representational dimensions, suggesting a more expansive view on visual processing in the human brain.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01980-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:8:y:2024:i:11:d:10.1038_s41562-024-01980-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01980-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().