Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to the Transverse Occipital Sulcus Affects Scene but Not Object Processing

Traditionally, it has been theorized that the human visual system identifies and classifies scenes in an object-centered approach, such that scene recognition can only occur once key objects within a scene are identified. Recent research points toward an alternative approach, suggesting that the global image features of a scene are sufficient for the recognition and categorization of a scene. We have previously shown that disrupting object processing with repetitive TMS to object-selective cortex enhances scene processing possibly through a release of inhibitory mechanisms between object and scene pathways [Mullin, C. R., & Steeves, J. K. E. TMS to the lateral occipital cortex disrupts object processing but facilitates scene processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 4174–4184, 2011]. Here we show the effects of TMS to the transverse occipital sulcus (TOS), an area implicated in scene perception, on scene and object processing. TMS was delivered to the TOS or the vertex (control site) while participants performed an object and scene natural/nonnatural categorization task. Transiently interrupting the TOS resulted in significantly lower accuracies for scene categorization compared with control conditions. This demonstrates a causal role of the TOS in scene processing and indicates its importance, in addition to the parahippocampal place area and retrosplenial cortex, in the scene processing network. Unlike TMS to object-selective cortex, which facilitates scene categorization, disrupting scene processing through stimulation of the TOS did not affect object categorization. Further analysis revealed a higher proportion of errors for nonnatural scenes that led us to speculate that the TOS may be involved in processing the higher spatial frequency content of a scene. This supports a nonhierarchical model of scene recognition.

Download Full-text

TMS to the Lateral Occipital Cortex Disrupts Object Processing but Facilitates Scene Processing

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00095 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 23 (12) ◽

pp. 4174-4184 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Caitlin R. Mullin ◽

Jennifer K. E. Steeves

Keyword(s):

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Scene Perception ◽

Visual Image ◽

Object Perception ◽

Occipital Cortex ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Object Processing ◽

Repetitive Tms ◽

Scene Processing ◽

Lateral Occipital Cortex

The study of brain-damaged patients and advancements in neuroimaging have lead to the discovery of discrete brain regions that process visual image categories, such as objects and scenes. However, how these visual image categories interact remains unclear. For example, is scene perception simply an extension of object perception, or can global scene “gist” be processed independently of its component objects? Specifically, when recognizing a scene such as an “office,” does one need to first recognize its individual objects, such as the desk, chair, lamp, pens, and paper to build up the representation of an “office” scene? Here, we show that temporary interruption of object processing through repetitive TMS to the left lateral occipital cortex (LO), an area known to selectively process objects, impairs object categorization but surprisingly facilitates scene categorization. This result was replicated in a second experiment, which assessed the temporal dynamics of this disruption and facilitation. We further showed that repetitive TMS to left LO significantly disrupted object processing but facilitated scene processing when stimulation was administered during the first 180 msec of the task. This demonstrates that the visual system retains the ability to process scenes during disruption to object processing. Moreover, the facilitation of scene processing indicates disinhibition of areas involved in global scene processing, likely caused by disrupting inhibitory contributions from the LO. These findings indicate separate but interactive pathways for object and scene processing and further reveal a network of inhibitory connections between these visual brain regions.

Download Full-text

Visual Scene Processing in Familiar and Unfamiliar Environments

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00003.2007 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 97 (5) ◽

pp. 3670-3683 ◽

Cited By ~ 86

Author(s):

Russell A. Epstein ◽

J. Stephen Higgins ◽

Karen Jablonski ◽

Alana M. Feiler

Keyword(s):

Spatial Information ◽

Scene Perception ◽

Retrosplenial Cortex ◽

Visual Scene ◽

Neural Systems ◽

Repetition Suppression ◽

Neural Representations ◽

Parahippocampal Cortex ◽

Scene Processing ◽

Viewpoint Invariance

Humans and animals use information obtained from the local visual scene to orient themselves in the wider world. Although neural systems involved in scene perception have been identified, the extent to which processing in these systems is affected by previous experience is unclear. We addressed this issue by scanning subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they viewed photographs of familiar and unfamiliar locations. Scene-selective regions in parahippocampal cortex (the parahippocampal place area, or PPA), retrosplenial cortex (RSC), and the transverse occipital sulcus (TOS) responded more strongly to images of familiar locations than to images of unfamiliar locations with the strongest effects (>50% increase) in RSC. Examination of fMRI repetition suppression (RS) effects indicated that images of familiar and unfamiliar locations were processed with the same degree of viewpoint specificity; however, increased viewpoint invariance was observed as individual scenes became more familiar over the course of a scan session. Surprisingly, these within-scan-session viewpoint-invariant RS effects were only observed when scenes were repeated across different trials but not when scenes were repeated within a trial, suggesting that within- and between-trial RS effects may index different aspects of visual scene processing. The sensitivity to environmental familiarity observed in the PPA, RSC, and TOS supports earlier claims that these regions mediate the extraction of navigationally relevant spatial information from visual scenes. As locations become familiar, the neural representations of these locations become enriched, but the viewpoint invariance of these representations does not change.

Download Full-text

When You Do Not Get the Whole Picture: Scene Perception After Occipital Cortex Lesions

Frontiers in Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnins.2021.716273 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Anna C. Geuzebroek ◽

Karlijn Woutersen ◽

Albert V. van den Berg

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Scene Perception ◽

Occipital Cortex ◽

Scene Recognition ◽

Visual Field Defects ◽

Humphrey Perimetry ◽

Neuroimaging Data ◽

The Individual

Background: Occipital cortex lesions (OCLs) typically result in visual field defects (VFDs) contralateral to the damage. VFDs are usually mapped with perimetry involving the detection of point targets. This, however, ignores the important role of integration of visual information across locations in many tasks of everyday life. Here, we ask whether standard perimetry can fully characterize the consequences of OCLs. We compare performance on a rapid scene discrimination task of OCL participants and healthy observers with simulated VFDs. While the healthy observers will only suffer the loss of part of the visual scene, the damage in the OCL participants may further compromise global visual processing.Methods: VFDs were mapped with Humphrey perimetry, and participants performed two rapid scene discrimination tasks. In healthy participants, the VFDs were simulated with hemi- and quadrant occlusions. Additionally, the GIST model, a computational model of scene recognition, was used to make individual predictions based on the VFDs.Results: The GIST model was able to predict the performance of controls regarding the effects of the local occlusion. Using the individual predictions of the GIST model, we can determine that the variability between the OCL participants is much larger than the extent of the VFD could account for. The OCL participants can further be categorized as performing worse, the same, or better as their VFD would predict.Conclusions: While in healthy observers the extent of the simulated occlusion accounts for their performance loss, the OCL participants’ performance is not fully determined by the extent or shape of their VFD as measured with Humphrey perimetry. While some OCL participants are indeed only limited by the local occlusion of the scene, for others, the lesions compromised the visual network in a more global and disruptive way. Yet one outperformed a healthy observer, suggesting a possible adaptation to the VFD. Preliminary analysis of neuroimaging data suggests that damage to the lateral geniculate nucleus and corpus callosum might be associated with the larger disruption of rapid scene discrimination. We believe our approach offers a useful behavioral tool for investigating why similar VFDs can produce widely differing limitations in everyday life.

Download Full-text

An Integrated Approach for Traffic Scene Understanding from Monocular Cameras

10.51202/9783186815125 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Malte Oeljeklaus

Keyword(s):

Neural Network ◽

Convolutional Neural Network ◽

Scene Perception ◽

Integrated Approach ◽

Image Features ◽

Road Users ◽

Environment Model ◽

Computational Performance ◽

Spatial Reconstruction ◽

The Individual

This thesis investigates methods for traffic scene perception with monocular cameras for a basic environment model in the context of automated vehicles. The developed approach is designed with special attention to the computational limitations present in practical systems. For this purpose, three different scene representations are investigated. These consist of the prevalent road topology as the global scene context, the drivable road area and the detection and spatial reconstruction of other road users. An approach is developed that allows for the simultaneous perception of all environment representations based on a multi-task convolutional neural network. The obtained results demonstrate the efficiency of the multi-task approach. In particular, the effects of shareable image features for the perception of the individual scene representations were found to improve the computational performance. Contents Nomenclature VII 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Outline and contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 Related Work and Fundamental Background 8 2.1 Advances in CNN...

Download Full-text

Neural Correlates of Fixated Low- and High-level Scene Properties during Active Scene Viewing

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01599 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (10) ◽

pp. 2013-2023

Author(s):

John M. Henderson ◽

Jessica E. Goold ◽

Wonil Choi ◽

Taylor R. Hayes

Keyword(s):

Real World ◽

Visual Analysis ◽

Scene Perception ◽

Active Vision ◽

Semantic Content ◽

Retrosplenial Cortex ◽

Edge Density ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Lateral Occipital Complex ◽

High Level

During real-world scene perception, viewers actively direct their attention through a scene in a controlled sequence of eye fixations. During each fixation, local scene properties are attended, analyzed, and interpreted. What is the relationship between fixated scene properties and neural activity in the visual cortex? Participants inspected photographs of real-world scenes in an MRI scanner while their eye movements were recorded. Fixation-related fMRI was used to measure activation as a function of lower- and higher-level scene properties at fixation, operationalized as edge density and meaning maps, respectively. We found that edge density at fixation was most associated with activation in early visual areas, whereas semantic content at fixation was most associated with activation along the ventral visual stream including core object and scene-selective areas (lateral occipital complex, parahippocampal place area, occipital place area, and retrosplenial cortex). The observed activation from semantic content was not accounted for by differences in edge density. The results are consistent with active vision models in which fixation gates detailed visual analysis for fixated scene regions, and this gating influences both lower and higher levels of scene analysis.

Download Full-text

Different roles of the parahippocampal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) in panoramic scene perception

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.04.058 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 47 (4) ◽

pp. 1747-1756 ◽

Cited By ~ 124

Author(s):

Soojin Park ◽

Marvin M. Chun

Keyword(s):

Scene Perception ◽

Retrosplenial Cortex ◽

Parahippocampal Place Area

Download Full-text

Functional Reorganization of the Visual Dorsal Stream as Probed by 3-D Visual Coherence in Williams Syndrome

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00662 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (11) ◽

pp. 2624-2636 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Inês Bernardino ◽

José Rebola ◽

Reza Farivar ◽

Eduardo Silva ◽

Miguel Castelo-Branco

Keyword(s):

Williams Syndrome ◽

Visual Information ◽

Dorsal Stream ◽

Occipital Cortex ◽

Retrosplenial Cortex ◽

Ventral Stream ◽

Object Categorization ◽

Depth Information ◽

Visual Stream ◽

Dorsal Pathway

Object and depth perception from motion cues involves the recruitment of visual dorsal stream brain areas. In 3-D structure-from-motion (SFM) perception, motion and depth information are first extracted in this visual stream to allow object categorization, which is in turn mediated by the ventral visual stream. Such interplay justifies the use of SFM paradigms to understand dorsal–ventral integration of visual information. The nature of such processing is particularly interesting to be investigated in a neurological model of cognitive dissociation between dorsal (impaired) and ventral stream (relatively preserved) processing, Williams syndrome (WS). In the current fMRI study, we assessed dorsal versus ventral stream processing by using a performance-matched 3-D SFM object categorization task. We found evidence for substantial reorganization of the dorsal stream in WS as assessed by whole-brain ANOVA random effects analysis, with subtle differences in ventral activation. Dorsal reorganization was expressed by larger medial recruitment in WS (cuneus, precuneus, and retrosplenial cortex) in contrast with controls, which showed the expected dorsolateral pattern (caudal intraparietal sulcus and lateral occipital cortex). In summary, we found a substantial reorganization of dorsal stream regions in WS in response to simple visual categories and 3-D SFM perception, with less affected ventral stream. Our results corroborate the existence of a medial dorsal pathway that provides the substrate for information rerouting and reorganization in the presence of lateral dorsal stream vulnerability. This interpretation is consistent with recent findings suggesting parallel routing of information in medial and lateral parts of dorsal stream.

Download Full-text

Medial occipital cortex participates in a cortical network for transsaccadic feature discrimination: an fMRI paradigm

10.1101/2021.03.29.437597 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

B. R. Baltaretu ◽

W. Dale Stevens ◽

E. Freud ◽

J. D. Crawford

Keyword(s):

Spatial Frequency ◽

Shape Change ◽

Occipital Cortex ◽

Cortical Network ◽

Object Processing ◽

Repetition Suppression ◽

Early Visual Cortex ◽

Transsaccadic Perception ◽

Transsaccadic Memory ◽

Object Features

AbstractTo date, the cortical correlates for human transsaccadic vision have been probed for single object features such as orientation (associated with parietal repetition suppression) and spatial frequency (associated with occipital repetition enhancement). Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to distinguish cortical modulations associated with transsaccadic perception of multiple object features. Participants (n=21) viewed a 2D object and then, after sustained fixation or a saccade, judged whether the shape or orientation of the re-presented object had changed. Since feature change was randomized, participants had to remember both features across saccades to perform the task. A whole-brain voxelwise contrast (Saccade > Fixation; n=17) uncovered areas that might be specialized for transsaccadic memory, updating and/or perception, including medial occipital, dorsomedial posterior parietal, and dorsal frontal cortex. Searching within these regions, we then employed a feature contrast (Orientation vs. Shape change). This contrast revealed feature-specific modulations (consistent with shape change enhancement) in left medial occipital cortex. The peak site (left cuneus) showed contralateral functional connectivity with early visual cortex (lingual gyrus), object-processing areas (occipitotemporal cortex) and saccade / motor areas in parietal cortex. These observations show that medial occipital cortex participates in a cortical network involved in transsaccadic feature perception. Together with the previous literature, this suggests separate mechanisms for transsaccadic perception of intrinsic object features (spatial frequency, shape) versus object location and orientation.

Download Full-text

Causal evidence for a double dissociation between object- and scene-selective regions of visual cortex: A pre-registered TMS replication study

10.1101/2020.07.24.219386 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Miles Wischnewski ◽

Marius V. Peelen

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Scene Recognition ◽

Small Sample ◽

Lateral Occipital Complex ◽

Double Dissociation ◽

Scene Processing ◽

High Level ◽

Organizing Principles ◽

Individual Objects

AbstractNatural scenes are characterized by individual objects as well as by global scene properties such as spatial layout. Functional neuroimaging research has shown that this distinction between object and scene processing is one of the main organizing principles of human high-level visual cortex. For example, object-selective regions, including the lateral occipital complex (LOC), were shown to represent object content (but not scene layout), while scene-selective regions, including the occipital place area (OPA), were shown to represent scene layout (but not object content). Causal evidence for a double dissociation between LOC and OPA in representing objects and scenes is currently limited, however. One TMS experiment, conducted in a relatively small sample (N=13), reported an interaction between LOC and OPA stimulation and object and scene recognition performance (Dilks et al., 2013). Here, we present a high-powered pre-registered replication of this study (N=72, including male and female human participants), using group-average fMRI coordinates to target LOC and OPA. Results revealed unambiguous evidence for a double dissociation between LOC and OPA: Relative to vertex stimulation, TMS over LOC selectively impaired the recognition of objects, while TMS over OPA selectively impaired the recognition of scenes. Furthermore, we found that these effects were stable over time and consistent across individual objects and scenes. These results show that LOC and OPA can be reliably and selectively targeted with TMS, even when defined based on group-average fMRI coordinates. More generally, they support the distinction between object and scene processing as an organizing principle of human high-level visual cortex.Significance StatementOur daily-life environments are characterized both by individual objects and by global scene properties. The distinction between object and scene processing features prominently in visual cognitive neuroscience, with fMRI studies showing that this distinction is one of the main organizing principles of human high-level visual cortex. However, causal evidence for the selective involvement of object- and scene-selective regions in processing their preferred category is less conclusive. Here, testing a large sample (N=72) using an established paradigm and a pre-registered protocol, we found that TMS over object-selective cortex (LOC) selectively impaired object recognition while TMS over scene-selective cortex (OPA) selectively impaired scene recognition. These results provide conclusive causal evidence for the distinction between object and scene processing in human visual cortex.

Download Full-text