Evidence for feature binding in the superior parietal lobule

Abstract

The neural substrates of feature binding are an old, yet still not completely resolved problem. While patient studies suggest that posterior parietal cortex is necessary for feature binding, imaging evidence has been inconclusive in the past. These studies compared visual feature and conjunction search to investigate the neural substrate of feature conjunctions. However, a common problem of these comparisons was a confound with search difficulty. To circumvent this confound, we directly investigated the localized representation of features (color and spatial frequency) and feature conjunctions in a single search task by using multivariate pattern analysis at high field strength (7T). In right superior parietal lobule, we found evidence for the representation of feature conjunctions that could not be explained by the summation of individual feature representations and thus indicates conjoined processing of color and spatial frequency.