Object Familiarity in LOC

Hundreds of studies have explored the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC), which is critical for shape perception. In a pair of papers, we measured LOC responses to four categories of stimuli: familiar objects, novel objects constructed by rearranging the parts of the familiar objects, scattered objects in which the parts were no longer touching, and a pixel-scrambled control condition. Our findings suggest that LOC is sensitive to inter-part relations, but not necessarily to object familiarity.

3D representation of a brain with red splotches indicating activity

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