Social brain responses to natural scene images of social interactions.

Recent research reveals that human occipitotemporal 'social brain' regions that are selective for images of individual faces and bodies are also sensitive to visual cues of social interaction. Earlier studies mainly contrasted observing dyadic interactions with non-interactive controls, emphasizing the interacting/non-interacting distinction to observers, and lacking the variety seen in natural settings. To address these limitations, we analysed a 7 T fMRI data set in which participants viewed many naturalistic images while performing a memory task.

Boosting forward connectivity between primary visual and body selective cortex reduces interference between sex and emotion judgements of bodies.

We effortlessly categorise other people along socially relevant categories such as sex, age, and emotion. A core question in social vision relates to whether we perceive these categories independently or in relation to each other. Here, we investigated categorisation of sex and emotion from the body, finding that participants generally fail to fully ignore task-irrelevant variations of sex while judging body emotional expressions.

Are there cortical somatotopic motor maps outside of the human precentral gyrus?

Human body movements are supported by a somatotopic map, primary motor cortex (M1), that is found along the precentral gyrus. Recent evidence has suggested two further motor maps that span the lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) and the precuneus. Confirmation of these maps is important, as they influence our understanding of the organization of motor behavior, for example by revealing how visual- and motor-related activity interact.

Characterizing the discriminability of visual categorical information in strongly connected voxels.

Functional brain responses are strongly influenced by connectivity. Recently, we demonstrated a major example of this: category discriminability within occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) is enhanced for voxel sets that share strong functional connectivity to distal brain areas, relative to those that share lesser connectivity. That is, within OTC regions, sets of 'most-connected' voxels show improved multivoxel pattern discriminability for tool-, face-, and place stimuli relative to voxels with weaker connectivity to the wider brain.

Converging evidence that left extrastriate body area supports visual sensitivity to social interactions.

Navigating our complex social world requires processing the interactions we observe. Recent psychophysical and neuroimaging studies provide parallel evidence that the human visual system may be attuned to efficiently perceive dyadic interactions. This work implies, but has not yet demonstrated, that activity in body-selective cortical regions causally supports efficient visual perception of interactions.

Testing cognitive theories with multivariate pattern analysis of neuroimaging data.

Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) has emerged as a powerful method for the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography data. The new approaches to experimental design and hypothesis testing afforded by MVPA have made it possible to address theories that describe cognition at the functional level. Here we review a selection of studies that have used MVPA to test cognitive theories from a range of domains, including perception, attention, memory, navigation, emotion, social cognition and motor control.

Asymmetric visual representation of sex from facial appearance.

We efficiently infer others' traits from their faces, and these inferences powerfully shape our social behaviour. Here, we investigated how sex is represented in facial appearance. Based on previous findings from sex-judgment tasks, we hypothesized that the perceptual encoding of sex is not balanced but rather polarized: for the processes that generate a sex percept, the default output is "male," and the representation of female faces extends that of the male, engaging activity over unique detectors that are not activated by male faces.

The role of motion in the neural representation of social interactions in the posterior temporal cortex.

Humans are an inherently social species, with multiple focal brain regions sensitive to various visual social cues such as faces, bodies, and biological motion. More recently, research has begun to investigate how the brain responds to more complex, naturalistic social scenes, identifying a region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (SI-pSTS; i.e.

Asymmetric visual representation of sex from human body shape.

We efficiently infer others' states and traits from their appearance, and these inferences powerfully shape our social behaviour. One key trait is sex, which is strongly cued by the appearance of the body. What are the visual representations that link body shape to sex? Previous studies of visual sex judgment tasks find observers have a bias to report "male", particularly for ambiguous stimuli.

Examining the value of body gestures in social reward contexts.

Brain regions associated with the processing of tangible rewards (such as money, food, or sex) are also involved in anticipating social rewards and avoiding social punishment. To date, studies investigating the neural underpinnings of social reward have presented feedback via static or dynamic displays of faces to participants. However, research demonstrates that participants find another type of social stimulus, namely, biological motion, rewarding as well, and exert effort to engage with this type of stimulus.

Neural representations of haptic object size in the human brain revealed by multivoxel fMRI patterns.

The brain must interpret sensory input from diverse receptor systems to estimate object properties. Much has been learned about the brain mechanisms behind these processes in vision, but our understanding of haptic perception remains less clear. Here we examined haptic judgments of object size, which require integrating multiple cutaneous and proprioceptive afferent signals, as a model problem.

Causal Evidence for Expression of Perceptual Expectations in Category-Selective Extrastriate Regions.

Expectations about a visual event shape the way it is perceived [1-4]. For example, expectations induced by valid cues signaling aspects of a visual target can improve judgments about that target, relative to invalid cues [5, 6]. Such expectation effects are thought to arise via pre-activation of a template in neural populations that represent the target [7, 8] in early sensory areas [9] or in higher-level regions.

Perceiving emotion and sex from the body: evidence from the Garner task for independent processes.

The appearance of the body signals socially relevant states and traits, but the how these cues are perceived is not well understood. Here we examined judgments of emotion and sex from the body's appearance. Understanding how we extract these cues is important because they are both salient and socially relevant.

Automatic imitation remains unaffected under cognitive load.

Automaticity has been argued to be a core feature of the mental processes that guide social interactions, such as those underpinning imitative behaviors. To date, however, there is little known about the automaticity of imitative tendencies. In the current study, we used a finger movement stimulus-response compatibility task to index processes associated with controlling the urge to copy other people's actions.

fMRI repetition suppression reveals no sensitivity to trait judgments from faces in face perception or theory-of-mind networks.

The human face cues a wealth of social information, but the neural mechanisms that underpin social attributions from faces are not well known. In the current fMRI experiment, we used repetition suppression to test the hypothesis that populations of neurons in face perception and theory-of-mind neural networks would show sensitivity to faces that cue distinct trait judgments. Although faces were accurately discriminated based on associated traits, our results showed no evidence that face or theory-of-mind networks showed repetition suppression for face traits.

Neural networks supporting social evaluation of bodies based on body shape.

Body shape cues inferences regarding personality and health, but the neural processes underpinning such inferences remain poorly understood. Across two fMRI experiments, we test the extent to which neural networks associated with body perception and theory-of-mind (ToM) support social inferences based on body shape. Participants observed obese, muscular, and slim bodies that cued distinct social inferences as revealed in behavioural pilot experiments.

Neural responses to visually observed social interactions.

Success in the social world requires the ability to perceive not just individuals and their actions, but pairs of people and the interactions between them. Despite the complexity of social interactions, humans are adept at interpreting those interactions they observe. Although the brain basis of this remarkable ability has remained relatively unexplored, converging functional MRI evidence suggests the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is centrally involved.

Human Parahippocampal Cortex Supports Spatial Binding in Visual Working Memory.

Studies investigating the functional organization of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) suggest that parahippocampal cortex (PHC) generates representations of spatial and contextual information used by the hippocampus in the formation of episodic memories. However, evidence from animal studies also implicates PHC in spatial binding of visual information held in short term, working memory. Here we examined a 46-year-old man (P.

Category selectivity in human visual cortex: Beyond visual object recognition.

Human ventral temporal cortex shows a categorical organization, with regions responding selectively to faces, bodies, tools, scenes, words, and other categories. Why is this? Traditional accounts explain category selectivity as arising within a hierarchical system dedicated to visual object recognition. For example, it has been proposed that category selectivity reflects the clustering of category-associated visual feature representations, or that it reflects category-specific computational algorithms needed to achieve view invariance.

Evidence for Integrated Visual Face and Body Representations in the Anterior Temporal Lobes.

Research on visual face perception has revealed a region in the ventral anterior temporal lobes, often referred to as the anterior temporal face patch (ATFP), which responds strongly to images of faces. To date, the selectivity of the ATFP has been examined by contrasting responses to faces against a small selection of categories. Here, we assess the selectivity of the ATFP in humans with a broad range of visual control stimuli to provide a stronger test of face selectivity in this region.

Linking person perception and person knowledge in the human brain.

Neuroscience research has examined separately how we detect human agents on the basis of their face and body (person perception) and how we reason about their thoughts, traits or intentions (person knowledge). Neuroanatomically distinct networks have been associated with person perception and person knowledge, but it remains unknown how multiple features of a person (e.g.

Body selectivity in occipitotemporal cortex: Causal evidence.

Perception of others' bodies provides information that is useful for a number of important social-cognitive processes. Evidence from neuroimaging methods has identified focal cortical regions that are highly selective for perceiving bodies and body parts, including the extrastriate body area (EBA) and fusiform body area (FBA). Our understanding of the functional properties of these regions, and their causal contributions to behavior, has benefitted from the study of neuropsychological patients and particularly from investigations using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

The lateral occipitotemporal cortex in action.

Understanding and responding to other people's actions is fundamental for social interactions. Whereas many studies emphasize the importance of parietal and frontal regions for these abilities, several lines of recent research show that the human lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) represents varied aspects of action, ranging from perception of tools and bodies and the way they typically move, to understanding the meaning of actions, to performing overt actions. Here, we highlight common themes across these lines of work, which have informed theories related to high-level vision, concepts, social cognition, and apraxia.

Brain correlates of experience-dependent changes in stimulus discrimination based on the amount and schedule of exposure.

One product of simple exposure to similar visual stimuli is that they become easier to distinguish. The early visual cortex and other brain areas (such as the prefrontal cortex) have been implicated in such perceptual learning effects, but the anatomical specificity within visual cortex and the relationship between sensory cortex and other brain areas has yet to be examined. Moreover, while variations in the schedule (rather than merely the amount) of exposure influence experience-dependent improvement in discrimination, the neural sequelae of exposure schedule have not been fully investigated.

A critical role for the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex in perceptual learning of scenes and faces: complementary findings from amnesia and FMRI.

It is debated whether subregions within the medial temporal lobe (MTL), in particular the hippocampus (HC) and perirhinal cortex (PrC), play domain-sensitive roles in learning. In the present study, two patients with differing degrees of MTL damage were first exposed to pairs of highly similar scenes, faces, and dot patterns and then asked to make repeated same/different decisions to preexposed and nonexposed (novel) pairs from the three categories (Experiment 1). We measured whether patients would show a benefit of prior exposure (preexposed > nonexposed) and whether repetition of nonexposed (and preexposed) pairs at test would benefit discrimination accuracy.