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Published March 14, 2019 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Imaging object-scene relations processing in visible and invisible natural scenes

Abstract

Integrating objects with their context is a key step in interpreting complex visual scenes. Here, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 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 vs. incongruent scenes in the lateral occipital complex, inferior temporal cortex, parahippocampal cortex, and prefrontal cortex. Importantly, and in contrast to previous studies, these activations could not be explained by task-induced conflict. A secondary goal of this study was to examine whether processing of object-context relations could occur in the absence of awareness. We found no evidence for brain activity differentiating between congruent and incongruent invisible masked scenes, which might reflect a genuine lack of activation, or stem from the limitations of our study. Overall, our results provide novel support for the roles of parahippocampal cortex and frontal areas in conscious processing of object-context relations, which cannot be explained by either low-level differences or task demands. Yet they further suggest that brain activity is decreased by visual masking to the point of becoming undetectable with our fMRI protocol.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received 23 January 2018; Accepted 13 December 2018; Published 14 March 2019. 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: L.M. developed the study concept and all authors contributed to the study design and data collection. N.F. performed data analysis. N.F. and L.M. drafted the paper; all authors provided critical revisions and approved the final version of the paper for submission. The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplemental Material - 41598_2019_38654_MOESM1_ESM.doc

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Created:
August 22, 2023
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October 20, 2023