Abstract
The superior temporal sulcus is implicated in a wide range of visual and social perceptual processes: the perception of human motion, actions, animacy, speech, and faces, theory of mind, and the integration of audiovisual information. Many of these functions recruit overlapping regions in the STS while others elicit complex patterns of activation, making the functionality STS difficult to characterize. Our goal is to identify the core computations that connect these disparate functions, as well as better map how these functions are spatially distributed across STS. To address this long-standing question, we collected combined fMRI and dMRI within the same subject population across a broad range of stimuli and measures. Functional scans included: biological motion, social animacy, visual categories (faces, places, bodies, objects), motion, speech perception, multi-modal integration, and visual attention reorienting. White matter structural data was collected with high angular and spatial resolution diffusion imaging using a 253 direction multiband 2mm isovoxel DSI sequence. To compare our results with measures of intrinsic connectivity, we also collected resting state functional data. Our data also serves as a reference map for functional selectivity and structural connectivity of STS. To that end, we present our first mappings of functionally-identified regions on STS from this dataset. Activity on this map is consistent with previous reports, but here, with the functional and structural data in the same subject population: for example, more posterior activation for theory of mind relative to biological motion. Uniquely, we also map white matter structural connectivity in these subjects, seeding from functional ROIs, as well showing the relationship of STS connectivity with major tracts such as the inferior longitudinal fasciculus and the vertical occipital fasciculus. This large scale functional and structural STS dataset will lead to a more comprehensive characterization of STS's role in social perception and other cognitive processes.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018