Center-periphery organization of human object areas

The organizing principles that govern the layout of human object-related ar eas are largely unknown. Here we propose a new organizing principle in whic h object representations are arranged according to a central versus periphe ral visual field bias. The proposal is based on the finding that building-r elated regions overlap periphery-biased visual field representations, where as face-related regions are associated with center-biased representations. Furthermore, the eccentricity maps encompass essentially the entire extent of object-related occipito-temporal cortex, indicating that most object rep resentations are organized with respect to retinal eccentricity. A control experiment ruled out the possibility that the results are due exclusively t o unequal feature distribution in these images. We hypothesize that brain r egions representing object categories that rely on detailed central scrutin y (such as faces) are more strongly associated with processing of central i nformation, compared to representations of objects that may be recognized b y more peripheral information (such as buildings or scenes).