Spatiotemporal Analysis of Category and Target-related Information Processing in the Brain during Object Detection

Abstract

to recognize a target object, brain implements strategies which involved a combination of externally sensory-driven and internally task-driven mechanisms. While previous studies have suggested the role of frontal brain areas in sending task-related information to visual cortices, especially the lateral-occipital cortex, they failed to provide quantitative evidence supporting the transaction of taskrelated information between those areas. However, recently developed representational Granger causality analysis, could allow us to track the movement of any desired information in the brain. Therefore, we designed an EEG object detection experiment and evaluated the spatiotemporal dynamics of category-and target-related information transaction across the brain using the mentioned method. Results showed that prefrontal area was the first region to process the target-related information, even before the appearance of the stimulus. This information was transferred to posterior brain areas during the stimulus presentation probably to facilitate object recognition and to direct the decision-making procedure. We also observed that, as compared to category-related information, the target-related information could predict the behavioral detection outcomes more precisely, suggesting the dominant representation of the internal compared to external information. These results provided new insights into the role of prefrontal cortex and the representation of task in the brain during object detection.

Perceptual difficulty modulates the direction of information flow in familiar face recognition

“…Our results are consistent with the literature suggesting that visual perception comprises both feed-forward and feedback neural mechanisms transferring information between the peri-occipital visual areas and the peri-frontal higher-order cognitive areas (Bar et al, 2006;Summerfield et al, 2006;Goddard et al, 2016;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2017b;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2017c;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2019). However, previous experimental paradigms and analyses did not dissociate feedback and feedforward information flow in familiar face recognition, and argued for a dominance of feedforward processing (Dobs et al, 2019;di Oleggio Castello and Gobbini, 2015;Ellis et al, 1979;Young and Burton, 2018).…”

“…Specifically, we only observed feedback when the sensory evidence was lowest (high perceptual difficulty) in our face familairty categorization task. Although a large literature has provided evidence for the role of topdown feedback in visual perception, especially when sensory visual information is low, they generally evaluated the feedback mechanisms within the visual system (Ress et al, 2000;Lamme and Roelfsema, 2000;Super et al, 2001;Lamme et al, 2002;Pratte et al, 2013;Fenske et al, 2006;Lee and Mumford, 2003;Felleman et al, 1991;Delorme et al, 2004;Mohsenzadeh et al, 2018;Kietzmann et al, 2019) rather than across the frontooccpital brain networks (Bar et al, 2006;Summerfield et al, 2006;Goddard et al, 2016;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2018;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2019). Our findings support theories suggesting that fronto-occipital information transfer may feedback (pre-existing) face templates, against which the input faces are compared for correct recognition (Bar et al, 2006;Summerfield et al, 2006).…”

“…Second, whether higher-order frontal brain areas contribute to familiar face recognition, as they do to object recognition (Bar et al,. 2006;Summerfield et al, 2006;Goddard et al, 2016;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2019), and whether levels of face familiarity and perceptual difficulty (as has been suggested previously (Woolgar et al, 2011;Woolgar et al, 2015)) impact the involvement of perifrontal cognitive areas in familiar face recognition.…”

“…We developed a novel connectivity method based on RSA to quantify the relationships between the evolution of information based on perioccipital EEG electrodes and those of the peri-frontal electrodes. As an advantage to previous Granger causality methods (Goddard et al, 2016;Goddard et al, 2019;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2019), the connectivity method developed here allowed us to check whether the transferred signals contained specific aspects of stimulus information.…”

“…This in turn facilitates the flow of familiar face information in a bottom-up feed-forward manner from the occipito-temporal to the frontal areas for recognition (di Oleggio Castello and Gobbini, 2015;Ramon et al, 2015;Ellis et al, 1979;Young and Burton, 2018). On the other hand, studies have also shown the role of frontal brain areas in facilitating the processing of visual inputs (Bar et al, 2006;Kveraga et al, 2007;Goddard et al, 2016;Karimi-Rouzbahani et al, 2019), such as faces (Kramer et al, 2018;Summerfield et al, 2006), by feeding back signals to the faceselective areas in the occipito-temporal visual areas, particularly when the visual input is ambiguous (Summerfield et al, 2006) or during face imagery (Mechelli et al, 2004;Johnson et al, 2007). These top-down mechanisms, which were localized in medial frontal cortex, have been suggested (but not quantitatively supported) to reflect feedback of (pre-existing) face templates, against which the input faces are compared for correct recognition (Summerfield et al, 2006).…”