Cortical regions involved in visual texture perception: a fMRI study
Beason-Held, L.L., Purpura, K.P., Krasuski, J.S., Maisog, J.Ma., Daly,
E.M., Mangot, D.J., Desmond, R.E., Optican, L.M., Schapiro, M.B. and Van
Meter, J.W.
Cognitive Brain Research 7, 111-118 (1998)
Abstract
To determine visual areas of the human brain involved in elementary form
processing, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure
regional responses to two types of achromatic textures.
Healthy young adults were presented with 'random' textures which lacked
spatial organization of the black and white pixels that make up the image,
and 'correlated' textures in which the pixels were ordered to produce extended
contours and rectangular blocks at multiple spatial scales. Relative to
a fixation condition, random texture stimulation resulted in increased
signal intensity primarily in the striate cortex, with slight involvement
of the cuneus and middle occipital, lingual and fusiform gyri. Correlated
texture stimulation also resulted in activation of these areas, yet the
regional extent of this activation was significantly greater than that
produced by random textures. Unlike random stimulation, correlated stimulation
additionally resulted in middle temporal activation. Direct comparison
of the two stimulation conditions revealed significant differences most
consistently in the anterior fusiform gyrus, but also in striate, middle
occipital, lingual and posterior temporal regions in subjects with robust
activation patterns. While both random and correlated stimulation produced
activation in similar areas of the occipital lobe, the increase in regional
activation during the correlated condition suggests increased recruitment
of neuronal populations occurs in response to textures containing visually
salient features. This increased recruitment occurs within striate, extrastriate
and temporal regions of the brain, also suggesting the presence of receptive
field mechanisms in the ventral visual pathway that are sensitive to features
produced by higher-order spatial correlations.
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