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Marrazzo G, De Martino F, Lage-Castellanos A, Vaessen MJ, de Gelder B. Voxelwise encoding models of body stimuli reveal a representational gradient from low-level visual features to postural features in occipitotemporal cortex. Neuroimage 2023:120240. [PMID: 37348622 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120240] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2023] [Revised: 06/16/2023] [Accepted: 06/19/2023] [Indexed: 06/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Research on body representation in the brain has focused on category-specific representation, using fMRI to investigate the response pattern to body stimuli in occipitotemporal cortex without so far addressing the issue of the specific computations involved in body selective regions, only defined by higher order category selectivity. This study used ultra-high field fMRI and banded ridge regression to investigate the coding of body images, by comparing the performance of three encoding models in predicting brain activity in occipitotemporal cortex and specifically the extrastriate body area (EBA). Our results suggest that bodies are encoded in occipitotemporal cortex and in the EBA according to a combination of low-level visual features and postural features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giuseppe Marrazzo
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Limburg 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands
| | - Federico De Martino
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Limburg 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States and Department of NeuroInformatics
| | - Agustin Lage-Castellanos
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Limburg 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Cuban Center for Neuroscience, Street 190 e/25 and 27 Cubanacán Playa Havana, CP 11600, Cuba
| | - Maarten J Vaessen
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Limburg 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands
| | - Beatrice de Gelder
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Limburg 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
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Liu W, Cheng Y, Yuan X, Jiang Y. Looking more masculine among females: Spatial context modulates gender perception of face and biological motion. Br J Psychol 2023; 114:194-208. [PMID: 36302701 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12605] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2022] [Revised: 09/12/2022] [Accepted: 10/11/2022] [Indexed: 01/11/2023]
Abstract
Perception of visual information highly depends on spatial context. For instance, perception of a low-level visual feature, such as orientation, can be shifted away from its surrounding context, exhibiting a simultaneous contrast effect. Although previous studies have demonstrated the adaptation aftereffect of gender, a high-level visual feature, it remains largely unknown whether gender perception can also be shaped by a simultaneously presented context. In the present study, we found that the gender perception of a central face or a point-light walker was repelled away from the gender of its surrounding faces or walkers. A norm-based opponent model of lateral inhibition, which accounts for the adaptation aftereffect of high-level features, can also excellently fit the simultaneous contrast effect. But different from the reported contextual effect of low-level features, the simultaneous contrast effect of gender cannot be observed when the centre and the surrounding stimuli are from different categories, or when the surrounding stimuli are suppressed from awareness. These findings on one hand reveal a resemblance between the simultaneous contrast effect and the adaptation aftereffect of high-level features, on the other hand highlight different biological mechanisms underlying the contextual effects of low- and high-level visual features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenjie Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China
| | - Yuhui Cheng
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China
| | - Xiangyong Yuan
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China
| | - Yi Jiang
- State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China
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Foster C. A Distributed Model of Face and Body Integration. Neurosci Insights 2022; 17:26331055221119221. [PMID: 35991808 PMCID: PMC9386443 DOI: 10.1177/26331055221119221] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2022] [Accepted: 07/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Separated face- and body-responsive brain networks have been identified that show strong responses when observers view faces and bodies. It has been proposed that face and body processing may be initially separated in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex and then combined into a whole person representation in the anterior temporal cortex, or elsewhere in the brain. However, in contrast to this proposal, our recent study identified a common coding of face and body orientation (ie, facing direction) in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex, demonstrating an integration of face and body information at an early stage of face and body processing. These results, in combination with findings that show integration of face and body identity in the lateral occipitotemporal, parahippocampal and superior parietal cortex, and face and body emotional expression in the posterior superior temporal sulcus and medial prefrontal cortex, suggest that face and body integration may be more distributed than previously considered. I propose a new model of face and body integration, where areas at the intersection of face- and body-responsive regions play a role in integrating specific properties of faces and bodies, and distributed regions across the brain contribute to high-level, abstract integration of shared face and body properties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Celia Foster
- Biopsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- Center of Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany
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The neural coding of face and body orientation in occipitotemporal cortex. Neuroimage 2021; 246:118783. [PMID: 34879251 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118783] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/14/2021] [Revised: 11/09/2021] [Accepted: 12/04/2021] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Face and body orientation convey important information for us to understand other people's actions, intentions and social interactions. It has been shown that several occipitotemporal areas respond differently to faces or bodies of different orientations. However, whether face and body orientation are processed by partially overlapping or completely separate brain networks remains unclear, as the neural coding of face and body orientation is often investigated separately. Here, we recorded participants' brain activity using fMRI while they viewed faces and bodies shown from three different orientations, while attending to either orientation or identity information. Using multivoxel pattern analysis we investigated which brain regions process face and body orientation respectively, and which regions encode both face and body orientation in a stimulus-independent manner. We found that patterns of neural responses evoked by different stimulus orientations in the occipital face area, extrastriate body area, lateral occipital complex and right early visual cortex could generalise across faces and bodies, suggesting a stimulus-independent encoding of person orientation in occipitotemporal cortex. This finding was consistent across functionally defined regions of interest and a whole-brain searchlight approach. The fusiform face area responded to face but not body orientation, suggesting that orientation responses in this area are face-specific. Moreover, neural responses to orientation were remarkably consistent regardless of whether participants attended to the orientation of faces and bodies or not. Together, these results demonstrate that face and body orientation are processed in a partially overlapping brain network, with a stimulus-independent neural code for face and body orientation in occipitotemporal cortex.
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Foster C, Zhao M, Bolkart T, Black MJ, Bartels A, Bülthoff I. Separated and overlapping neural coding of face and body identity. Hum Brain Mapp 2021; 42:4242-4260. [PMID: 34032361 PMCID: PMC8356992 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25544] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2021] [Revised: 04/15/2021] [Accepted: 05/13/2021] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Recognising a person's identity often relies on face and body information, and is tolerant to changes in low‐level visual input (e.g., viewpoint changes). Previous studies have suggested that face identity is disentangled from low‐level visual input in the anterior face‐responsive regions. It remains unclear which regions disentangle body identity from variations in viewpoint, and whether face and body identity are encoded separately or combined into a coherent person identity representation. We trained participants to recognise three identities, and then recorded their brain activity using fMRI while they viewed face and body images of these three identities from different viewpoints. Participants' task was to respond to either the stimulus identity or viewpoint. We found consistent decoding of body identity across viewpoint in the fusiform body area, right anterior temporal cortex, middle frontal gyrus and right insula. This finding demonstrates a similar function of fusiform and anterior temporal cortex for bodies as has previously been shown for faces, suggesting these regions may play a general role in extracting high‐level identity information. Moreover, we could decode identity across fMRI activity evoked by faces and bodies in the early visual cortex, right inferior occipital cortex, right parahippocampal cortex and right superior parietal cortex, revealing a distributed network that encodes person identity abstractly. Lastly, identity decoding was consistently better when participants attended to identity, indicating that attention to identity enhances its neural representation. These results offer new insights into how the brain develops an abstract neural coding of person identity, shared by faces and bodies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Celia Foster
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.,Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany.,International Max Planck Research School for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Mintao Zhao
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.,School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, UK
| | - Timo Bolkart
- Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Michael J Black
- Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Andreas Bartels
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.,Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany.,Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany.,Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
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Brooks KR, Baldry E, Mond J, Stevenson RJ, Mitchison D, Stephen ID. Gender and the Body Size Aftereffect: Implications for Neural Processing. Front Neurosci 2019; 13:1100. [PMID: 31680834 PMCID: PMC6813220 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01100] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2019] [Accepted: 09/30/2019] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Prolonged exposure to wide (thin) bodies causes a perceptual aftereffect such that subsequently viewed bodies appear thinner (wider) than they actually are. This phenomenon is known as visual adaptation. We used the adaptation paradigm to examine the gender selectivity of the neural mechanisms encoding body size and shape. Observers adjusted female and male test bodies to appear normal-sized both before and after adaptation to bodies digitally altered to appear heavier or lighter. In Experiment 1, observers adapted simultaneously to bodies of each gender distorted in opposite directions, e.g., thin females and wide males. The direction of resultant aftereffects was contingent on the gender of the test stimulus, such that in this example female test bodies appeared wider while male test bodies appeared thinner. This indicates at least some separation of the neural mechanisms processing body size and shape for the two genders. In Experiment 2, adaptation involved either wide females, thin females, wide males or thin males. Aftereffects were present in all conditions, but were stronger when test and adaptation genders were congruent, suggesting some overlap in the tuning of gender-selective neural mechanisms. Given that visual adaptation has been implicated in real-world examples of body size and shape misperception (e.g., in anorexia nervosa or obesity), these results may have implications for the development of body image therapies based on the adaptation model.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin R. Brooks
- Body Image and Ingestion Group, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Perception in Action Research Centre, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Evelyn Baldry
- Body Image and Ingestion Group, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Jonathan Mond
- Centre for Rural Health, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS, Australia
- Translational Health Research Institute, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Richard J. Stevenson
- Body Image and Ingestion Group, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Perception in Action Research Centre, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Deborah Mitchison
- Translational Health Research Institute, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Ian D. Stephen
- Body Image and Ingestion Group, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Perception in Action Research Centre, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
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