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Brief Communication

Nature Neuroscience 5, 629–630 (1 July 2002) | doi:10.1038/nn866

Parallel processing in high-level categorization of natural images

Guillaume A. Rousselet , Mich|[egrave]|le Fabre-Thorpe & Simon J. Thorpe

Models of visual processing often include an initial parallel stage that is restricted to relatively low-level features, whereas activation of higher-level object descriptions is generally assumed to require attention. Here we report that even high-level object representations can be accessed in parallel: in a rapid animal versus non-animal categorization task, both behavioral and electrophysiological data show that human subjects were as fast at responding to two simultaneously presented natural images as they were to a single one.