The primate visual cortex has a specialized architecture for processing specific object categories such as faces and scenes. For instance, inferior temporal cortex in macaque contains a network of discrete patches for processing face images. Direct comparison between human and macaque category-selective areas shows that some areas in one species have missing homologues in the other species. Using fMRI, we identified a face-selective region in anterior temporal cortex in human and a scene-selective region in posterior temporal cortex in macaque, which correspond to homologous areas in the other species. A surface-based analysis of cortical maps showed a high degree of similarity in the spatial arrangement of face and scene areas between human and macaque. This suggests that neighborhood relations between functionally-defined cortical areas are evolutionarily conserved - though the topographic relation between the areas and their underlying anatomy (gyral/sulcal pattern) may vary from one species to another.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012