Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 35, Issue 3, 15 April 2007, Pages 1264-1277
NeuroImage

Mental rotation and object categorization share a common network of prefrontal and dorsal and ventral regions of posterior cortex

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.01.012Get rights and content

Abstract

The multiple-views-plus-transformation variant of object model verification theories predicts that parietal regions that are critical for mental rotation contribute to visual object cognition. Some neuroimaging studies have shown that the intraparietal sulcus region is critically involved in mental rotation. Other studies indicate that both ventral and dorsal posterior regions are object-sensitive and involved in object perception and categorization tasks. However, it is unknown whether dorsal object-sensitive areas overlap with regions recruited for object mental rotation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to test this directly. Participants performed standard tasks of object categorization, mental rotation, and eye movements. Results provided clear support for the prediction, demonstrating overlap between dorsal object-sensitive regions in ventral–caudal intraparietal sulcus (vcIPS) and an adjacent dorsal occipital area and the regions that are activated during mental rotation but not during saccades. In addition, object mental rotation (but not saccades) activated object-sensitive areas in lateral dorsal occipitotemporal cortex (DOT), and both mental rotation and object categorization recruited ventrolateral prefrontal cortex areas implicated in attention, working memory, and cognitive control. These findings provide clear evidence that a prefrontal–posterior cortical system implicated in mental rotation, including the occipitoparietal regions critical for this spatial task, is recruited during visual object categorization. Altogether, the findings provide a key link in understanding the role of dorsal and ventral visual areas in spatial and object perception and cognition: Regions in occipitoparietal cortex, as well as DOT cortex, have a general role in visual object cognition, supporting not only mental rotation but also categorization.

Section snippets

Methods

The mental rotation task was followed by the object-decision task, or vice versa, counterbalanced across participants. The saccade task was last. Standard blocked designs were used to maximize activation and signal to noise ratio. The tasks were administered on a MacIntosh G3 Powerbook computer. Stimuli were projected via a magnetically shielded video projector onto a translucent screen placed behind the head of each subject. A front-surface mirror mounted on the head coil allowed participants

Object-decision task

Object-decision accuracy was the same (99.9%) on average in both Intact and Scrambled conditions.

Mental rotation task

Nine rotation angles were collapsed into three levels of rotation: low (20°, 40°, 60°), medium (80°, 100°, 120°), and high (140°, 160°, 180°), as in our prior work (Amick et al., 2006). For response times (RTs), to remove outliers, a cut-off of the mean ± 2.5 SDs was applied to each of the three rotation levels and the control condition, separately. RT and accuracy measures were subjected to repeated

Discussion

Our neuroimaging results provide clear and direct anatomical support for a key prediction of the MVPT variant of object model verification theories, namely, that regions along the dorsal stream critical for mental rotation can be recruited for visual object cognition (Bülthoff et al., 1995). We found that, during both mental rotation of objects in-depth and a simple object categorization task (and not during a saccade task), the same regions are activated in the ventral caudal IPS (vcIPS) and

Conclusions

It is well-established that the ventral visual pathway supports object analysis and representation, whereas the dorsal pathway supports spatial analysis, but both ventral occipitotemporal and more dorsal areas have been found to be object-sensitive, suggesting a role for the dorsal pathway in object analysis. Our neuroimaging findings clearly support a key prediction of the MVPT variant of object model verification theories: the dorsal object-sensitive areas of vcIPS and DF1, as well as parts

Acknowledgments

Research was supported by grants F32 AG05914 and Tufts University Faculty start-up funds to H.E.S who was also supported by a Faculty Research Award Committee (FRAC) Research Semester Fellowship from Tufts University and NINDS Grant 9R01 NS052914 during preparation of this manuscript. Brain scanning was conducted at and supported by pilot funding to H.E.S. from the MGH/MIT/HMS Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, which is supported by NCRR grant P41RR14075 and the MIND

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