Abstract
Eye movements play an important role in attention and visual processing. However, the manner in which eye move-ments are involved in object processing is not clear. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of eye movements on object-processing areas in the occipito-temporal region. Eye movements are always accompanied by visual perception; therefore, the effects of eye movements on object-processing areas in which visual object information is sent via eye movements instead of via retinal inputs of visual images must be measured. For this purpose, response to an eye- drawing stimulation in subjects who drew pictures of faces or buildings by their moving eyes under closed-eye condi-tions was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Functional areas in the occipito-temporal region showed negative responses to the eye-drawing stimulation, and the pattern of negative activation maps in the region was almost the same as that of positive activation maps observed after visual image stimulation. Responses in cate-gory-selective area showed category dependency to the eye-drawing stimulation. This suggests that eye movements provide inhibitory inputs to the object-processing areas in the occipito-temporal region, and these inputs may modulate visual inputs to these areas coming through the retina in the visual perception process.
Highlights
Functional magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated that many functional areas in the ventral visual pathway are activated by visual image stimulation
Responses in category-selective area showed category dependency to the eye-drawing stimulation. This suggests that eye movements provide inhibitory inputs to the object-processing areas in the occipito-temporal region, and these inputs may modulate visual inputs to these areas coming through the retina in the visual perception process
The activated areas extended from the dorsal to anterior ventral occipito-temporal regions, which included the lateral occipital complex known for processing objects, the occipital face area and face fusiform area (FFA) known for processing faces, and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) known for processing places [8,9,10,11]
Summary
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) demonstrated that many functional areas in the ventral visual pathway are activated by visual image stimulation. Activation is usually interpreted to be caused by visual information entering into these areas through the visual information pathway from the retina to primary visual areas This activation may be the result of a combination of the visual image and inputs of eye movement because eyes have different movement patterns depending on what is being observed. A previous study has reported that eye movements are involved in visual information processing, and that traces of eyes used for perceiving a visual scene are similar to those used for retrieving that scene after it is memorized [7]. This suggests possible inputs of eye movements to visual object-processing areas; proving this is difficult. We made the following two stimulation paradigms: an eye-drawing stimulation in which subjects drew pictures of faces or buildings by moving their eyes under closed-eye conditions, and a hand-drawing stimulation that is same as the eye-drawing stimulation except that a finger was used for drawing
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