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Multiple levels of visual object constancy revealed by event-related fMRI of repetition priming

Nature Neuroscience volume 5, pages 491–499 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

We conducted two event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments to investigate the neural substrates of visual object recognition in humans. We used a repetition-priming method with visual stimuli recurring at unpredictable intervals, either with the same appearance or with changes in size, viewpoint or exemplar. Lateral occipital and posterior inferior temporal cortex showed lower activity for repetitions of both real and non-sense objects; fusiform and left inferior frontal regions showed decreases for repetitions of only real objects. Repetition of different exemplars with the same name affected only the left inferior frontal cortex. Crucially, priming-induced decreases in activity of the right fusiform cortex depended on whether the three-dimensional objects were repeated with the same viewpoint, regardless of whether retinal image size changed; left fusiform decreases were independent of both viewpoint and size. These data show that dissociable subsystems in ventral visual cortex maintain distinct view-dependent and view-invariant object representations.

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Figure 1: Examples of stimuli and schematic illustration of experimental design.
Figure 2: Repetition priming effects in experiment 1.
Figure 3: Repetition priming effects in experiment 2.
Figure 4: Retinotopic effects were due to object size (group results, P〉0.001).
Figure 5: Summary of main activation foci in experiments 1 and 2 (group results, P〉0.001).

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Ellis, M. Tucker and M. Tarr for some of the stimuli, and the radiographers at the Functional Imaging Laboratory for technical assistance. This work was supported by Wellcome Programme grants to R.J.D. and J.D., a Wellcome Fellowship to R.N.H. and a Medical Research Council (UK) Co-operative Grant for 'Analysis of cognitive impairment and imaging of cognition' at University College London. J.D. holds a Royal Society–Wolfson Research Merit Award.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK

    P. Vuilleumier, R. N. Henson & J. Driver

  2. Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Functional Imaging Laboratory, 12 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK

    R. N. Henson & R. J. Dolan

  3. Royal Free Hospital and University College School of Medicine, Roland Hill Street, London, NW3 2PF, UK

    R. J. Dolan

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  1. P. Vuilleumier
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Correspondence to P. Vuilleumier.

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Vuilleumier, P., Henson, R., Driver, J. et al. Multiple levels of visual object constancy revealed by event-related fMRI of repetition priming. Nat Neurosci 5, 491–499 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn839

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