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Published June 27, 2017 | Submitted
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Imaging Object-Scene Integration in Visible and Invisible Natural Scenes

Abstract

Integrating objects with their context is a key step in the interpretation of complex visual scenes. Humans can do this very quickly, yet the brain mechanisms that mediate this ability are not yet understood. Here, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity while participants viewed visual scenes depicting a person performing an action with an object that was either congruent or incongruent with the scene. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed different activity for congruent compared to incongruent scenes in the lateral occipital complex, inferior temporal cortex, parahippocampal cortex, and prefrontal cortex, in line with existing models of scene processing. Importantly, and in contrast to previous studies, these activations could not be explained by task-induced conflicts. A secondary goal of this study was to examine whether object-context integration could occur in the absence of awareness, by comparing brain activity elicited by congruent vs. incongruent scenes that were suppressed from awareness using visual masking. We found no evidence for brain activity differentiating between congruent and incongruent invisible scenes. Overall, our results provide novel support for the roles of PHC and PFC in conscious object-context integration which cannot be explained by either low-level differences or task demands. Yet they further suggest that activity in these regions is decreased by visual masking to the point of becoming undetectable with our fMRI protocol.

Additional Information

The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. bioRxiv preprint first posted online Mar. 12, 2017. We thank Christof Koch and Ralph Adolphs for constructive suggestions and helpful discussion, and Hagar Gelbard Sagiv and Uri Maoz for their help with the design. We further thank Galit Yovel and Nurit Gronau for their insightful comments on the manuscript. LM was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1847/16) and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (grant No. 659765- MSCA-IF-EF-ST). NF was supported by the Fyssen and the Philippe foundations. Author Contributions: LM developed the study concept and all authors contributed to the study design and data collection. NF performed data analysis. NF and LM drafted the paper; all authors provided critical revisions and approved the final version of the paper for submission.

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August 19, 2023
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October 26, 2023