| Paper: | PS-2B.5 | ||
| Session: | Poster Session 2B | ||
| Location: | H Fläche 1.OG | ||
| Session Time: | Sunday, September 15, 17:15 - 20:15 | ||
| Presentation Time: | Sunday, September 15, 17:15 - 20:15 | ||
| Presentation: | Poster | ||
| Publication: | 2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 13-16 September 2019, Berlin, Germany | ||
| Paper Title: | The Nature of the Animacy Organization in Human Ventral Temporal Cortex | ||
| Manuscript: | Click here to view manuscript | ||
| License: |  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. |
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| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2019.1090-0 | ||
| Authors: | Sushrut Thorat, Radboud University, Netherlands; Daria Proklova, The University of Western Ontario, Canada; Marius Peelen, Radboud University, Netherlands | ||
| Abstract: | The principles underlying the animacy organization of the ventral temporal cortex (VTC) remain hotly debated, with recent evidence pointing to an animacy continuum rather than a dichotomy. What drives this continuum? According to the visual categorization hypothesis, the continuum reflects the degree to which animals contain animate-diagnostic features. By contrast, the agency hypothesis posits that the continuum reflects the degree to which animals are perceived as social agents. Here, we tested both hypotheses with a stimulus set in which visual categorizability and agency were dissociated based on representations in convolutional neural networks and behavioral experiments. Using fMRI, we found that visual categorizability and agency explained independent components of the animacy continuum in VTC. Modeled together, they fully explained the animacy continuum. Further analyses revealed that the clusters explained by visual categorizability were localized posterior to the clusters explained by agency. These results provide evidence for multiple animacy continua in VTC that follow different organizational principles. | ||