In the Eye of the Beholder: Visual Experience and Categories in the Human Brain

How does experience change representations of visual objects in the brain? Do cortical object representations reflect category membership? In this issue of Neuron, Jiang et al. show that category training leads to sharpening of neural responses in high-level visual cortex; in contrast, category boundaries may be represented only in prefrontal cortex.

[1]  D. Wilkin,et al.  Neuron , 2001, Brain Research.

[2]  R. Desimone,et al.  Visual properties of neurons in a polysensory area in superior temporal sulcus of the macaque. , 1981, Journal of neurophysiology.

[3]  S Fusi,et al.  Forming classes by stimulus frequency: Behavior and theory , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[4]  A. Treves,et al.  Morphing Marilyn into Maggie dissociates physical and identity face representations in the brain , 2005, Nature Neuroscience.

[5]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The lateral occipital complex and its role in object recognition , 2001, Vision Research.

[6]  Robert L. Goldstone.  Influences of categorization on perceptual discrimination. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[7]  Jessica Maye,et al.  Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination , 2002, Cognition.

[8]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  Discrimination Training Alters Object Representations in Human Extrastriate Cortex , 2006, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[9]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[10]  B. C. Griffith,et al.  The discrimination of speech sounds within and across phoneme boundaries. , 1957, Journal of experimental psychology.

[11]  M. Behrmann,et al.  Impact of learning on representation of parts and wholes in monkey inferotemporal cortex , 2002, Nature Neuroscience.

[12]  E. Miller,et al.  An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. , 2001, Annual review of neuroscience.

[13]  B. Scholl,et al.  The Automaticity of Visual Statistical Learning Statistical Learning , 2005 .

[14]  M. Riesenhuber,et al.  Categorization Training Results in Shape- and Category-Selective Human Neural Plasticity , 2007, Neuron.

[15]  David J. Freedman,et al.  Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. , 2001, Science.