Abstract
Surface gloss is an important cue to the material properties of objects. Recent progress in the study of macaque’s brain has increased our understating of the areas involved in processing information about gloss, however the homologies with the human brain are not yet fully understood. Here we used human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measurements to localize brain areas preferentially responding to glossy objects. We measured cortical activity for thirty-two rendered three-dimensional objects that had either Lambertian or specular surface properties. To control for differences in image structure, we overlaid a grid on the images and scrambled its cells. We found activations related to gloss in the posterior fusiform sulcus (pFs) and in area V3B/KO. Subsequent analysis with Granger causality mapping indicated that V3B/KO processes gloss information differently than pFs. Our results identify a small network of mid-level visual areas whose activity may be important in supporting the perception of surface gloss.
Highlights
Surface gloss provides an important cue to an object’s physical material and its microstructure (Nishio, Goda, & Komatsu, 2012)
To complement our whole brain contrast analysis, we examined the percent signal change (PSC) within independently identified regions of interest
Our results point to a role for the posterior fusiform sulcus and area V3B/KO in the processing of surface gloss: we found stronger responses to glossy objects than their matte counterparts, and this could not be explained by low-level stimulus differences
Summary
Surface gloss provides an important cue to an object’s physical material and its microstructure (Nishio, Goda, & Komatsu, 2012). Unlike other aspects of material, a slight change in an object (e.g. minor change of material or smoothness) can cause huge differences in the perceptual impression of gloss (Fleming, 2012). While a number of image cues have been proposed to modulate gloss perception, it is an open challenge to understand how this information is processed to infer surface material. Low-level factors such as the image luminance histogram skew can bias perceived gloss and cause perceptual aftereffects (Gegenfurtner, Baumgartner, & Wiebel, 2013; Motoyoshi, Nishida, Sharan, & Adelson, 2007).
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