Abstract
A significant body of research in cognitive neuroscience is aimed at understanding how object concepts are represented in the human brain. However, it remains unknown whether and where the visual and abstract conceptual features that define an object concept are integrated. We addressed this issue by comparing the neural pattern similarities among object-evoked fMRI responses with behavior-based models that independently captured the visual and conceptual similarities among these stimuli. Our results revealed evidence for distinctive coding of visual features in lateral occipital cortex, and conceptual features in the temporal pole and parahippocampal cortex. By contrast, we found evidence for integrative coding of visual and conceptual object features in perirhinal cortex. The neuroanatomical specificity of this effect was highlighted by results from a searchlight analysis. Taken together, our findings suggest that perirhinal cortex uniquely supports the representation of fully specified object concepts through the integration of their visual and conceptual features.
Highlights
Semantic memory imbues the world with meaning and shapes our understanding of the relationships among object concepts
This observation is consistent with results from the previous section which revealed that the similarities between object concepts in the temporal pole are preserved across task contexts (Figure 7A)
This finding dovetails with our result from the previous section which revealed that the similarities between object concepts in PRC were preserved across task contexts (Figure 7A)
Summary
Semantic memory imbues the world with meaning and shapes our understanding of the relationships among object concepts. Many neurocognitive models of semantic memory incorporate the notion that object concepts are represented in a feature-based manner (Rosch and Mervis, 1975; Tyler and Moss, 2001; Rogers and McClelland, 2004). On this view, our understanding of the concept ‘hairdryer’ is thought to reflect knowledge of observable perceptual properties (e.g. visual form) and abstract conceptual features Neurocognitive models of semantic memory differ with respect to how distributed feature representations relate to fully specified object concepts On one view, these representations are thought to emerge through interactions among modality-specific cortical areas (Kiefer and Pulvermuller, 2012; Martin, 2016)
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