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Feedback of visual object information to foveal retinotopic cortex

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 1439–1445 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

The mammalian visual system contains an extensive web of feedback connections projecting from higher cortical areas to lower areas, including primary visual cortex. Although multiple theories have been proposed, the role of these connections in perceptual processing is not understood. We found that the pattern of functional magnetic resonance imaging response in human foveal retinotopic cortex contained information about objects presented in the periphery, far away from the fovea, which has not been predicted by prior theories of feedback. This information was position invariant, correlated with perceptual discrimination accuracy and was found only in foveal, but not peripheral, retinotopic cortex. Our data cannot be explained by differential eye movements, activation from the fixation cross, or spillover activation from peripheral retinotopic cortex or from lateral occipital complex. Instead, our findings indicate that position-invariant object information from higher cortical areas is fed back to foveal retinotopic cortex, enhancing task performance.

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Figure 1: Example displays from Experiment 1.
Figure 2: ROIs in one example subject.
Figure 3: Mean correlations (±1 s.e.) for same (black bars) versus different (gray bars) categories and for same versus different locations for the four ROIs in Experiment 1.
Figure 4: Mean correlations (±1 s.e.) within and between categories (always between locations) for two ROIs in Experiment 2.
Figure 5: ROIs in one example subject and the corresponding mean correlations.
Figure 6: Correlations within and between categories (always between locations) for LOC and the foveal retinotopic cortex in Experiment 4, showing that task modulated object information more strongly in the foveal ROI than in LOC.
Figure 7: Time course and behavioral relevance of position-invariant information in foveal retinotopic ROI in Experiments 1 and 4.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members and friends of the Kanwisher laboratory for useful comments on the manuscript. M.A.W. was supported by a grant from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (C.J. Martin Fellowship) and H.P.O.d.B. was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders. This work was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health to N.K. (grants EY013455 and EY016159). We would also like to thank the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research for subsidizing the cost of scanning.

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Author notes

  1. Chris I Baker and Hans P Op de Beeck: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Mark A Williams, Won Mok Shim, Sabin Dang & Nancy Kanwisher

  2. Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Building C5C, Room 404, Macquarie University, Sydney, 2109, Australia

    Mark A Williams

  3. Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, 10 Center Drive, Building 10, Room 3N228, Bethesda, 20892, Maryland, USA

    Chris I Baker

  4. Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Hans P Op de Beeck

  5. Department of Brain & Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Won Mok Shim & Nancy Kanwisher

  6. Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Christina Triantafyllou

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Contributions

M.A.W. conducted Experiments 1–3, 5 and 6, designed Experiment 4 and wrote the manuscript. C.I.B. and H.P.O.d.B. were involved in the design and implementation of all of the studies and writing the manuscript, and H.P.O.d.B. also created the stimuli. W.M.S. conducted Experiment 4. S.D. wrote specialized eye tracking analysis programs, programmed the experiments and helped with data collection. C.T. optimized the neuroimaging sequences and N.K. supervised the entire project, including writing the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark A Williams.

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Williams, M., Baker, C., Op de Beeck, H. et al. Feedback of visual object information to foveal retinotopic cortex. Nat Neurosci 11, 1439–1445 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2218

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