Abstract
The parahippocampal place area (PPA), retrosplenial complex (RSC), and occipital place area (OPA) have been established as regions of the brain that are more sensitive to processing scenes compared with other visual stimuli (e.g., faces). The current investigation sought to understand what about scenes was preferred by each of these areas. In a slow event related fMRI study, 100 scenes were presented to participants (Aminoff et al., 2015). Results demonstrated that the rank order of magnitude for the 100 scenes was strongly correlated across all regions of scene selective regions of interest (ROIs) but this rank order did not carry over to early visual cortex. We examined what features explained this rank order. Scenes are complex stimuli that vary in visual features such as line orientation and colors; attentional features such as where is someone’s eye drawn to; and other features such as whether a social interaction is expected in the scene. Features were defined for each scene through a behavioral study of 20 participants. A linear regression was used to determine the variance accounted for by the range of features. Results demonstrated that the overall model with all the features included had an average r2 over .47. When explaining the rank order averaged across all scene ROIs, the feature that accounted for the most variance was the amount of right angles in the scene. The next strongest feature was the perception of navigation paths in the scene. Interestingly, color palette and whether a social interaction in the scene was expected also had prominent roles in accounting for variance in the rank order. Results will be discussed demonstrating differences across the various scene ROIs, suggesting a division of labor across these regions of the brain.
Acknowledgement: NSF BCS 1439237