Abstract
Damage to object-selective lateral occipital cortex (LO) results in impaired object recognition as evidenced in patients with object agnosia. We recently showed that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to LO disrupts object processing but enhances scene processing (Mullin & Steeves, 2011). This behavioural dissociation is mirrored in reduced BOLD signal at area LO subsequent to TMS to LO and increased BOLD signal in the scene-selective parahippocampal place area (PPA) (Mullin & Steeves, 2013). We performed consecutive repetitive TMS - fMRI using an fMR adaptation paradigm to determine response properties of object and scene processing regions following TMS to left LO compared to baseline. Participants viewed blocks of variant and invariant objects and scenes. At the TMS target site release from adaptation still occurred when viewing objects, and in the PPA release from adaptation was increased when viewing scenes. These findings suggest that despite disruption to area LO from TMS, it continues to differentiate objects. Remote areas in the network, specifically the PPA, benefit from disruption to LO with enhanced response properties.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014