Biology subjects

Sheinberg, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Sheinberg, D..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Neurons in inferior temporal cortex are sensitive to motion trajectory during degraded object recognition

Our brains continuously acquire sensory information and make judgments even when visual information is limited. In some circumstances, an ambiguous object can be recognized from how it moves, such as an animal hopping or a plane flying overhead. Yet it remains unclear how movement is processed by brain areas involved in visual object recognition. Here we investigate whether inferior temporal cortex, an area traditionally known for shape processing, has access to motion information during degraded shape recognition. We developed a matching task that required monkeys to recognize moving shapes with variable levels of shape degradation. Neural recordings in area IT showed that, surprisingly, some IT neurons preferred blurry shapes over clear ones. Further, many of the neurons exhibited motion sensitivity at different times during the presentation of the blurry target. Population decoding analyses showed that motion pattern could be decoded from IT neuron pseudo-populations. Contrary to previous findings, these results suggest that neurons in IT can integrate visual motion and shape information, particularly when shape information is degraded, in a way that has been previously overlooked. Our results highlight the importance of using challenging multi-feature recognition tasks to understand the role of area IT in naturalistic visual object recognition. (Word count: 199)

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

A Role for Visual Areas in Physics Simulations

To engage with the world, we must regularly make predictions about the outcomes of physical scenes. How do we make these predictions? Recent evidence points to simulation - the idea that we can introspectively manipulate rich, mental models of the world - as one possible explanation for how such predictions are accomplished. While theories based on simulation are supported by computational models, neuroscientific evidence for simulation is lacking and many important questions remain. For instance, do simulations simply entail a series of abstract computations? Or are they supported by sensory representations of the objects that comprise the scene being simulated? We posit the latter and suggest that the process of simulating a sequence of physical interactions is likely to evoke an imagery-like envisioning of those interactions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrate that when participants predict how a ball will fall through an obstacle-filled display, motion-sensitive brain regions are activated. We further demonstrate that this activity, which occurs even though no motion is being sensed, resembles activity patterns that arise while participants perceive the balls motion. This finding suggests that the process of simulating the balls movement is accompanied by a sensory representation of this movement. These data thus demonstrate that mental simulations recreate sensory depictions of how a physical scene is likely to unfold.

neuroscience↗