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Neural mechanisms of rapid natural scene categorization in human visual cortex

Nature volume 460, pages 94–97 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The visual system has an extraordinary capability to extract categorical information from complex natural scenes. For example, subjects are able to rapidly detect the presence of object categories such as animals or vehicles in new scenes that are presented very briefly1,2. This is even true when subjects do not pay attention to the scenes and simultaneously perform an unrelated attentionally demanding task3, a stark contrast to the capacity limitations predicted by most theories of visual attention4,5. Here we show a neural basis for rapid natural scene categorization in the visual cortex, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and an object categorization task in which subjects detected the presence of people or cars in briefly presented natural scenes. The multi-voxel pattern of neural activity in the object-selective cortex evoked by the natural scenes contained information about the presence of the target category, even when the scenes were task-irrelevant and presented outside the focus of spatial attention. These findings indicate that the rapid detection of categorical information in natural scenes is mediated by a category-specific biasing mechanism in object-selective cortex that operates in parallel across the visual field, and biases information processing in favour of objects belonging to the target object category.

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Figure 1: Schematic overview of trial layout.
Figure 2: Schematic overview of analysis approach.
Figure 3: Results of multi-voxel pattern analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Downing, U. Hasson, S. McMains, K. Norman, T. Stein and A. Treisman for suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript, members of the Kastner laboratory for help with retinotopic mapping, and N. Oosterhof for help with data analysis. This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (2RO1 MH64043, 1RO1 EY017699, 2P50 MH–62196) to S.K., and a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship and the F. Moss gift to L.F.-F.

Author Contributions M.V.P., in collaboration with L.F.-F. and S.K., conceived the experiment. M.V.P. acquired and analysed the data. M.V.P., L.F.-F. and S.K. interpreted the results and wrote the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA,

    Marius V. Peelen, Li Fei-Fei & Sabine Kastner

  2. Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA ,

    Marius V. Peelen & Sabine Kastner

  3. Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA ,

    Marius V. Peelen & Sabine Kastner

  4. Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA,

    Li Fei-Fei

Authors
  1. Marius V. Peelen
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  2. Li Fei-Fei
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  3. Sabine Kastner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marius V. Peelen.

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This file contains Supplementary Figures 1-2 with Legends, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Methods, a Supplementary Discussion and Supplementary References. (PDF 1690 kb)

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Peelen, M., Fei-Fei, L. & Kastner, S. Neural mechanisms of rapid natural scene categorization in human visual cortex. Nature 460, 94–97 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08103

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