Biomedical subjects

Russell A Epstein

Publications and source records attributed to Russell A Epstein.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Differential parahippocampal and retrosplenial involvement in three types of visual scene recognition.

Human observers can quickly and accurately interpret the meaning of complex visual scenes. The neural mechanisms underlying this ability are largely unexplored. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure cortical activity while subjects identified briefly presented scenes as specific familiar locations ("Houston Hall"), general place categories ("kitchen"), or general situational categories ("party"). Scene-responsive voxels in the parahippocampal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) were highly sensitive to recognition level when identifying scenes, responding more strongly during location identification than during place category or situation identification. In contrast, the superior temporal sulcus, cingulate sulcus, and supermarginal gyrus displayed the opposite pattern, responding more strongly during place category and situation identification. Consideration of results from 4 experiments suggests that the PPA represents the visuospatial structure of individual scenes, whereas RSC supports processes that allow scenes to be localized within a larger extended environment. These results suggest that different scene identification tasks tap distinct cortical networks. In particular, we hypothesize that the PPA and RSC are critically involved in the identification of specific locations but play a less central role in other scene recognition tasks.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Frontoparietal activity with minimal decision and control.

In the human brain, a well known frontoparietal circuit, including lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), presupplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex (pre-SMA/ACC), and both the superior and inferior parietal cortex, is involved in cognitive control. One proposal is that the frontoparietal cortex holds a flexible description of attended or task-relevant information, biasing processing in favor of this information in many different parts of the brain. Here, we separate frontoparietal coding of attended information from its active use in behavior. In two experiments, subjects watch a stream of visual stimuli in a fixed location. In the first experiment, there is no task to perform; in the second, decisions are orthogonal to the occurrence of new stimulus events. Even in these simple circumstances, we find that attended stimulus changes give extensive activation of LPFC, pre-SMA/ACC and parietal cortex, whereas unattended changes do not. Even without behavior to control, these classical "control" regions are active in simple update of attended information.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Cortical correlates of face and scene inversion: a comparison.

Face recognition is more strongly impaired by stimulus inversion than nonface object recognition. This phenomenon, known as the face inversion effect (FIE), suggests that the visual system contains specialized processing mechanisms that are more engaged by upright faces than by inverted faces or nonface objects. Neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies indicate that environmental scenes may also recruit specialized-purpose processing machinery but a comparable inversion effect for scenes has not been established. Here we demonstrate that both face and scene inversion lead to behavioral penalties during performance of a continuous visual matching task; however, the scene inversion effect was less robust and declined in magnitude over the course of the experiment. Scene inversion led to greater neural response in the functionally defined lateral occipital (LO) object area for inverted versus upright scenes and reduced response in the parahippocampal place area (PPA), while face inversion lead to greater response in LO and the right middle fusiform (MF) object area for inverted versus upright faces but no change in the fusiform face area (FFA). A whole-brain analysis revealed several regions that responded more strongly to either upright versus inverted faces or upright versus inverted scenes, some of which may be involved in post-recognition processing. These results demonstrate that both face and scene inversion cause a shift from specialized processing streams towards generic object-processing mechanisms; however, this shift only leads to a reliable behavioral penalty in the case of face inversion.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Perceptual deficits in amnesia: challenging the medial temporal lobe 'mnemonic' view.

Recent animal studies suggest that the medial temporal lobe (MTL), which is thought to subserve memory exclusively, may support non-mnemonic perceptual processes, with the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex contributing to spatial and object perception, respectively. There is, however, no support for this view in humans, with human MTL lesions causing prominent memory deficits in the context of apparently normal perception. We assessed visual discrimination in amnesic cases to reveal that while selective hippocampal damaged patients could discriminate faces, objects, abstract art and colour, they were significantly poorer in discriminating spatial scenes. By contrast, patients with MTL damage, including perirhinal cortex, were significantly impaired in discriminating scenes, faces, and to a lesser extent objects, with relatively intact discrimination of art and colour. These novel observations imply that the human MTL subserves both perceptual and mnemonic functions, with the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex playing distinct roles in spatial and object discrimination, respectively.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Learning places from views: variation in scene processing as a function of experience and navigational ability.

Humans and animals use information obtained from different viewpoints to form representations of the spatial structure of the world. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) adaptation to investigate the neural basis of this learning process and to show how the concomitant representations vary across individuals as a function of navigational ability. In particular, we examined the effect of repeating viewpoint and/ or place information over both short (within-trial) and long (across-scan) intervals on the neural response in scene processing regions. Short-term fMRI adaptation effects in the parahippocampal cortex were initially highly viewpoint-specific but became less so over time. Long-term fMRI repetition effects included a significant viewpoint-invariant component. When individual differences in navigational ability were considered, a significant correlation between the strength of these effects and self-reported navigational competence was observed. In particular, good navigators encoded representations that differed between new and old views and new and old places, whereas bad navigators did not. These results suggest that cortical scene representations evolve over time to become more viewpoint-invariant and that the quality of these representations directly impacts navigational ability.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Individual differences in FFA activity suggest independent processing at different spatial scales.

The brain processes images at different spatial scales, but it is unclear how far into the visual stream different scales remain segregated. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found evidence that BOLD activity in the fusiform face area (FFA) reflects computations based on separate spatial frequency inputs. When subjects perform different tasks (attend location vs. identity; attend whole vs. parts) or the same task with different stimuli (upright or inverted) with high- and low-pass images of cars and faces, individual differences in the FFA in one condition are correlated with those in the other condition. However, FFA activity in response to low-pass stimuli is independent of its response to high-pass stimuli. These results suggest that spatial scales are not integrated before the FFA and that processing in this area could support the flexible use of different sources of information present in broad-pass images.

Brain Mapping↗