Animate and inanimate objects in human visual cortex: Evidence for task-independent category effects

Evidence from neuropsychology suggests that the distinction between animate and inanimate kinds is fundamental to human cognition. Previous neuroimaging studies have reported that viewing animate objects activates ventrolateral visual brain regions, whereas inanimate objects activate ventromedial re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Neuropsychologia Vol. 47; no. 14; pp. 3111 - 3117
Main Authors:	Wiggett, Alison J., Pritchard, Iwan C., Downing, Paul E.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01-12-2009 Elsevier
Subjects:	Adult Analysis of Variance Anatomical correlates of behavior Animacy Behavioral psychophysiology Biological and medical sciences Brain Hemisphere Functions Brain Mapping Category-specificity Cognitive Processes Concept Formation - physiology Decision Making Diagnostic Tests Female fMRI Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Humans Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods Judgment - physiology Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods Male Mental Recall - physiology Neuropsychological Tests Neuropsychology Oxygen - blood Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology Perception Photic Stimulation - methods Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Reaction Time - physiology Task Analysis Task modulation Tests Time Factors Ventral stream Vision Visual Cortex - blood supply Visual Cortex - physiology Visual Stimuli Young Adult Category-specificity fMRI Animacy Task modulation Ventral stream Human Visual cortex Central nervous system Cognition Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging Encephalon Specificity Visual pathway Modulation Vision Visual ventral stream Perception Categorization Functional imaging
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Summary:	Evidence from neuropsychology suggests that the distinction between animate and inanimate kinds is fundamental to human cognition. Previous neuroimaging studies have reported that viewing animate objects activates ventrolateral visual brain regions, whereas inanimate objects activate ventromedial regions. However, these studies have typically compared only a small number of animate and inanimate kinds (e.g. animals and tools) and some evidence indicates that task demands determine whether these effects occur at all. In the current study we test whether a lateral–medial animacy bias is evident across a variety of stimuli, and across different tasks (matching two stimuli at a general, intermediate and exemplar level). Images of objects were presented sequentially in pairs, and match/mismatch judgements were made at different levels in different scans. The fMRI data showed ventrolateral activation for animate objects and ventromedial activation for inanimate objects. Additional analyses within these regions revealed no main effect of task, and no interactions between task and animacy. Furthermore, there were no subpopulations of voxels in any of the regions of interest that showed a significant task by animacy interaction. We conclude that ventral animate/inanimate category biases do not always depend on top-down task orientation. Furthermore, we consider whether the animate and inanimate activations reflect biases in the non-preferred responses of strongly category-selective regions such as the fusiform face area or the parahippocampal place area.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:	0028-3932 1873-3514
DOI:	10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.07.008