Distributed and overlapping neural bases for object individuation and identification
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1
The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Australia
To gain a sense of what, where and when visual information appears in our environment, we rely on two key processes known as object individuation and identification. In object individuation, spatial and temporal cues are used to register an object as a distinct perceptual event relative to other objects. In object identification, featural and related conceptual properties of a stimulus are extracted. It is currently unclear how these two processes are represented in the brain. We explored whether individuation and identification processes are underpinned by distinct neural substrates, and the extent to which brain regions involved in these two operations are consistent across encoding, maintenance and retrieval stages of visual short-term memory. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we tested for brain regions that were sensitive to the number of physical objects (individuation) or the number of distinct object identities (identification) presented in a display. Across both univariate and multi-voxel pattern analyses, we found a large degree of overlap between these two processes in the brain. In addition, the brain regions recruited for each process varied across each stage of visual short-term memory. Our findings challenge influential models of multiple object encoding in VSTM which argue that individuation and identification are underpinned by a limited set of non-overlapping brain regions.
Keywords:
fMRI,
visual short-term memory,
multi-voxel pattern analysis,
object identification,
object individuation
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Cognition and Executive Processes
Citation:
Naughtin
C,
Dux
P and
Mattingley
J
(2015). Distributed and overlapping neural bases for object individuation and identification.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00231
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Claire Naughtin, The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Brisbane, Australia, claire.naughtin@gmail.com