Smooth versus Textured Surfaces: Feature-Based Category Selectivity in Human Visual Cortex

Abstract

In fMRI studies, human lateral occipital (LO) cortex is thought to respond selectively to images of objects, compared with nonobjects. However, it remains unresolved whether all objects evoke equivalent levels of activity in LO, and, if not, which image features produce stronger activation. Here, we used an unbiased parametric texture model to predict preferred versus nonpreferred stimuli in LO. Observation and psychophysical results showed that predicted preferred stimuli (both objects and nonobjects) had smooth (rather than textured) surfaces. These predictions were confirmed using fMRI, for objects and nonobjects. Similar preferences were also found in the fusiform face area (FFA). Consistent with this: (1) FFA and LO responded more strongly to nonfreckled (smooth) faces, compared with otherwise identical freckled (textured) faces; and (2) strong functional connections were found between LO and FFA. Thus, LO and FFA may be part of an information-processing stream distinguished by feature-based category selectivity (smooth > textured).

Impact of Huntington’s Disease on Mental Rotation Performance in Motor Pre-Symptomatic Individuals

“…Decreased stimulus selectivity within PPA, a higher category-selective visual area responsible for scene [13,14] and shape encoding [16,18,19,73], has been reported previously in early symptomatic HD [9]. The absence of altered activation of the PPA and/or other object-selective areas such as lateral occipital complex (LOC) [74][75][76][77] in our current study could have two explanations: First, because early HD-related atrophy is more prominent in the tail of caudate [46], a region heavily connected to early visual areas [52,[68][69][70][71], HD-related impairments in visual cortical processing would be expected to extend from posterior to more anterior visual areas with disease progression [52,71].…”

Perception and appreciation of tactile objects: The role of visual experience and texture parameters (JPI-first)

“…Tactile textures, on the contrary, are rendered to provide real information about the physical surface qualities of objects or products, such as sculpture and architecture materials that can not only be seen but felt by touch as well. In the last few decades or so, research has exclusively focused on the perception and aesthetics of visual textures (e.g., texture perception: [16, 22, 41, 48, 53, 54, 71, 76, 90, 95, 109, 111-113, 116, 121]; texture aesthetics: [14,28,50,67,68,77,78,87,94,107,110]) with scant attention to tactile textures. The intent of this study was to fill this gap by studying the perception and aesthetics of tactilely textured objects in individuals who underwent typical sensory development in comparison with those who experienced deprivation of the visual sense.…”