Abstract
Distinguishing animate from inanimate objects is fundamental for social perception in humans and animals. Visual motion cues indicative of self-propelled object motion are useful for animacy perception: they can be detected over a wide expanse of visual field, at distance and in low visibility conditions, can attract attention and provide clues about object behaviour. However, the neural correlates of animacy perception evoked exclusively by visual motion cues, i.e. not relying on form, background or visual context, are unclear. We aimed to address this question in four psychophysical experiments in humans, two of which performed during neuroimaging. The stimulus was a single dot with constant form that moved on a blank background and evoked controlled degrees of perceived animacy through parametric variations of self-propelled motion cues. BOLD signals reflecting perceived animacy in a graded manner irrespective of eye movements were found in one intraparietal region. Additional whole-brain and region-of-interest analyses revealed no comparable effects in brain regions associated with social processing or other areas. Our study shows that animacy perception evoked solely by visual motion cues, a basic perceptual process in social cognition, engages brain regions not primarily associated with social cognition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 120-132 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | NeuroImage |
| Volume | 197 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 Aug 15 |
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Keywords
- Animacy perception
- fMRI
- Psychophysics
- Visual motion
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neurology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Cite this
Perceiving animacy purely from visual motion cues involves intraparietal sulcus. / Schultz, Johannes; Bulthoff, Heinrich.
In: NeuroImage, Vol. 197, 15.08.2019, p. 120-132.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceiving animacy purely from visual motion cues involves intraparietal sulcus
AU - Schultz, Johannes
AU - Bulthoff, Heinrich
PY - 2019/8/15
Y1 - 2019/8/15
N2 - Distinguishing animate from inanimate objects is fundamental for social perception in humans and animals. Visual motion cues indicative of self-propelled object motion are useful for animacy perception: they can be detected over a wide expanse of visual field, at distance and in low visibility conditions, can attract attention and provide clues about object behaviour. However, the neural correlates of animacy perception evoked exclusively by visual motion cues, i.e. not relying on form, background or visual context, are unclear. We aimed to address this question in four psychophysical experiments in humans, two of which performed during neuroimaging. The stimulus was a single dot with constant form that moved on a blank background and evoked controlled degrees of perceived animacy through parametric variations of self-propelled motion cues. BOLD signals reflecting perceived animacy in a graded manner irrespective of eye movements were found in one intraparietal region. Additional whole-brain and region-of-interest analyses revealed no comparable effects in brain regions associated with social processing or other areas. Our study shows that animacy perception evoked solely by visual motion cues, a basic perceptual process in social cognition, engages brain regions not primarily associated with social cognition.
AB - Distinguishing animate from inanimate objects is fundamental for social perception in humans and animals. Visual motion cues indicative of self-propelled object motion are useful for animacy perception: they can be detected over a wide expanse of visual field, at distance and in low visibility conditions, can attract attention and provide clues about object behaviour. However, the neural correlates of animacy perception evoked exclusively by visual motion cues, i.e. not relying on form, background or visual context, are unclear. We aimed to address this question in four psychophysical experiments in humans, two of which performed during neuroimaging. The stimulus was a single dot with constant form that moved on a blank background and evoked controlled degrees of perceived animacy through parametric variations of self-propelled motion cues. BOLD signals reflecting perceived animacy in a graded manner irrespective of eye movements were found in one intraparietal region. Additional whole-brain and region-of-interest analyses revealed no comparable effects in brain regions associated with social processing or other areas. Our study shows that animacy perception evoked solely by visual motion cues, a basic perceptual process in social cognition, engages brain regions not primarily associated with social cognition.
KW - Animacy perception
KW - fMRI
KW - Psychophysics
KW - Visual motion
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064915951&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85064915951&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.04.058
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.04.058
M3 - Article
C2 - 31028922
AN - SCOPUS:85064915951
VL - 197
SP - 120
EP - 132
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
SN - 1053-8119
ER -