Distributed representation of objects in the human ventral visual pathway

Brain imaging and electrophysiological recording studies in humans have rep orted discrete cortical regions in posterior ventral temporal cortex that r espond preferentially to faces, buildings, and letters. These findings sugg est a category-specific anatomically segregated modular organization of the object vision pathway. Here we present data from a functional MRI study in which we found three distinct regions of ventral temporal cortex that resp onded preferentially to faces and two categories of other objects, namely h ouses and chairs, and had a highly consistent topological arrangement. Alth ough the data could be interpreted as evidence for separate modules, we fou nd that each category also evoked significant responses in the regions that responded maximally to other stimuli. Moreover, each category was associat ed with its oven differential pattern of response across ventral temporal c ortex. These results indicate that the representation of an object is not r estricted to a region that responds maximally to that object, but rather is distributed across a broader expanse of cortex. We propose that the functi onal architecture of the ventral visual pathway is not a mosaic of category -specific modules but instead is a continuous representation of information about object form that has a highly consistent and orderly topological arr angement.