Refreshing and Integrating Visual Scenes in Scene-selective Cortex

■ Constructing a rich and coherent visual experience involves maintaining visual information that is not perceptually available in the current view. Recent studies suggest that briefly thinking about a stimulus (refreshing) can modulate activity in categoryspecific visual areas. Here, we tested the nature of such perceptually refreshed representations in the parahippocampal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) using fMRI. We asked whether a refreshed representation is specific to a restricted view of a scene, or more view-invariant. Participants saw a panoramic scene and were asked to think back to (refresh) a part of the scene after it disappeared. In some trials, the refresh cue appeared twice on the same side (e.g., refresh left–refresh left), and other trials, the refresh cue appeared on different sides (e.g., refresh left– refresh right). A control condition presented halves of the scene twice on same sides (e.g., perceive left–perceive left) or different sides...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: JOCN
• Authors: Soojin Park, Marvin M. Chun, Marcia K. Johnson
• Keywords: JOCN 2010, Perceive Left–perceive, Refresh Cue, Refreshed Representation