A humanness dimension to visual object coding in the brain

Contini, Erika; Goddard, Erin; Grootswagers, Tijl; Williams, Mark A.; Carlson, Thomas A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117139

Cited by 24 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Second, other groups of subjects judged how similar the face or body images were to a human face or body. The inclusion of these human similarity tasks was inspired by the finding that relative similarity to humans may account for the animacy continuum (Contini et al 2019), and that this may in fact reflect . CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license made available under a (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.…”

Section: Humanness Not Taxonomy Best Explains Neural Similarity In Face-and Body-selective Areas Of Otcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untangling the Animacy Organization of Occipitotemporal Cortex

et al. 2021

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Some of the most impressive functional specialization in the human brain is found in occipitotemporal cortex (OTC), where several areas exhibit selectivity for a small number of visual categories, such as faces and bodies, and spatially cluster based on stimulus animacy.Previous studies suggest this animacy organization reflects the representation of an intuitive taxonomic hierarchy, distinct from the presence of face-and body-selective areas in OTC.Using human fMRI, we investigated the independent contribution of these two factors -the face-body division and taxonomic hierarchy -in accounting for the animacy organization of OTC, and whether they might also be reflected in the architecture of several deep neural networks. We found that graded selectivity based on animal resemblance to human faces and bodies masquerades as an apparent animacy continuum, which suggests that taxonomy is not a separate factor underlying the organization of the ventral visual pathway.

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Section: Humanness Not Taxonomy Best Explains Neural Similarity In Face-and Body-selective Areas Of Otcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untangling the Animacy Organization of Occipitotemporal Cortex

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, other groups of subjects judged how similar the face or body images were to a human face or body. The inclusion of these human similarity tasks was inspired by the finding that relative similarity to humans may account for the animacy continuum (Contini et al 2019), and that this may in fact reflect gradation in selectivity for animal faces and bodies. These judgments were converted to group averaged behavioral RDMs, which were compared to a Taxonomy model RDM constructed for just the 24 face and body images that included the six levels of the intuitive taxonomic hierarchy ( Figure 1A).…”

Section: Humanness Not Taxonomy Best Explains Neural Similarity In mentioning

confidence: 99%

Untangling the animacy organization of occipitotemporal cortex

Ritchie

Zeman

Bosmans

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Some of the most impressive functional specialization in the human brain is found in occipitotemporal cortex (OTC), where several areas exhibit selectivity for a small number of visual categories, such as faces and bodies, and spatially cluster based on stimulus animacy. Previous studies suggest this animacy organization reflects the representation of an intuitive taxonomic hierarchy, distinct from the presence of face- and body-selective areas in OTC. Using human fMRI, we investigated the independent contribution of these two factors, the face-body division and taxonomic hierarchy, in accounting for the animacy organization of OTC, and whether they might also be reflected in the architecture of several deep neural networks. We found that graded selectivity based on animal resemblance to human faces and bodies masquerades as an apparent animacy continuum, which suggests that taxonomy is not a separate factor underlying the organization of the ventral visual pathway.

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“…An animal differs from an inanimate object in many respects, so animacy may be a multidimensional concept, rather than one property. The dimensions of animacy that have been explored include "being alive" (Connolly et al, 2012;Gray et al, 2007;Huth et al, 2012;Leib et al, 2016;Looser et al, 2013;Rogers et al, 2005;Wheatley et al, 2011), "looking like an animal" (Bracci et al, 2019;Connolly et al, 2012;Huth et al, 2012;Rogers et al, 2005;Sha et al, 2015;Wheatley et al, 2011), "having mobility" (Beauchamp et al, 2002(Beauchamp et al, , 2003Shultz & McCarthy, 2014), "having agency" (Contini et al, 2019;Gobbini et al, 2007Gobbini et al, , 2010Lowder & Gordon, 2015;Shultz et al, 2015;Shultz & McCarthy, 2014;Thorat et al, 2019), and "being unpredictable" (Lowder & Gordon, 2015). The emerging picture is complex.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chosen animacy dimensions explain variance in the ventral visual stream fMRI measurements: agency (Thorat et al, 2019), animacy (Blumenthal et al, 2018), humanlikeness (Rosenthal-von der Pütten et al, 2019), and capacity for self-movement and thought rather than face presence (Proklova & Goodale, 2020). The time course with which animacy representations emerge has been investigated with magnetoencephalography (MEG), revealing the time course of agency (Contini et al, 2019). However, MEG patterns do not seem to carry information about the animate vs inanimate object category, in contrast to fMRI (Proklova et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling five dimensions of animacy in human brain and behaviour

Jozwik

Najarro

Bosch

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The perception of animate things is of great behavioural importance to humans. Despite the prominence of the distinct brain and behavioural responses to animate and inanimate things, however, it remains unclear which of several commonly entangled properties underlie these observations. Here, we investigate the importance of five dimensions of animacy: being alive, looking like an animal, having agency, having mobility, and being unpredictable in brain (fMRI, EEG) and behaviour (property and similarity judgments) of 19 subjects using a stimulus set of 128 images that disentangles the five dimensions (optimized by a genetic algorithm). Our results reveal a differential pattern across brain and behaviour. The living/non-living distinction (being alive) was prominent in judgments, but despite its prominence in neuroscience literature, did not explain variance in brain representations. The other dimensions of animacy explained variance in both brain and behaviour. The having agency dimension explained more variance in higher-level visual areas, consistent with higher cognitive contributions. The being unpredictable dimension instead captured representations in both lower and higher-level visual cortex, possibly because unpredictable things require attention. Animacy is multidimensional and our results show that distinct dimensions are differentially represented in human brain and behaviour.

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A humanness dimension to visual object coding in the brain

Cited by 24 publications

References 56 publications

Untangling the Animacy Organization of Occipitotemporal Cortex

Untangling the Animacy Organization of Occipitotemporal Cortex

Untangling the animacy organization of occipitotemporal cortex

Disentangling five dimensions of animacy in human brain and behaviour

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