Many complex aspects of human visual perception and recognition take place in the ventral temporal cortex; however, the functional organization of this region remains unknown. Much of the brain has been found to consist of discrete cortical areas which are distinguishable by various aspects of cortical organization, including functional properties. In the ventral temporal cortex, only a handful of visual category-selective areas have been found which collectively constitute a minority of the region. This thesis addresses two issues regarding the ventral temporal cortex. The first is an investigation of the development of known category-selective regions through a review of neural plasticity and an empirical study of a subject with a unique developmental history. The second is an approach to functionally parcellating the ventral temporal cortex, which surveys other approaches to parcellating the ventral temporal cortex and then introduces a novel data-driven method for identifying cortical functional organization.

The human ventral visual stream is a processing stream in the human brain that is involved in visual perception and recognition. This stream contains a multitude of brain regions spanning the occipital lobe and the ventral aspect of the temporal lobe. An unanswered question is: How consistent are functional and microanatomical characteristics of the ventral visual stream across individuals? In study 1, I quantified if and how cytoarchitectonic areas, defined as areas that vary significantly in their cell density across the 6-layered cortical ribbon, of the ventral stream are linked to macroanatomical landmarks and if they are consistent across people. In study 2, I quantified the degree to which functional regions in ventral temporal cortex (VTC) and lateral occipito-temporal cortex (LOTC) are consistent across individuals. In study 3 I tested how responses in functional re- gions processing faces and bodies in VTC relate to behavioral judgements of ambiguous images and to what degree this relationship is consistent across individuals. Results of studies 1 -- 3 revealed strik- ingly high consistency of functional regions and cytoarchitectonic areas relative to macronanatomical landmarks and across people, and a consistent relationship of responses in face- and body-selective regions to behavioral judgements. These findings led me to ask in study 4: what principles drive this organization? Thus, in study 4, I investigated the role of experience in shaping the functional layout of the ventral stream by studying the functional organization of VTC in congenital blind partici- pants. I found that without visual input, the functional organization of VTC is substantially more heterogeneous in congenitally blind than sighted participants. This discovery suggests that common experience in sighted people contributes to their common functional organization of VTC. Together, results of these studies suggest that both the function and cytoarchitectonic organization of VTC is much more consistent across individuals that previously thought, and that visual experience plays an important role in shaping its functional organization. These data provide an important foundation for future studies that investigate both innate and experience-related organizational principles of the human ventral stream.

Clinical neuropsychology is a rapidly evolving specialty whose practitioners serve patients with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other vascular impairments, brain tumors, epilepsy and nonepileptic seizure disorders, developmental disabilities, progressive neurological disorders, HIV- and AIDS-related disorders, and dementia. . Services include evaluation, treatment, and case consultation in child, adult, and the expanding geriatric population in medical and community settings. The clinical goal always is to restore and maximize cognitive and psychological functioning in an injured or compromised brain. Most neuropsychology reference books focus primarily on assessment and diagnosis, and to date none has been encyclopedic in format. Clinicians, patients, and family members recognize that evaluation and diagnosis is only a starting point for the treatment and recovery process. During the past decade there has been a proliferation of programs, both hospital- and clinic-based, that provide rehabilitation, treatment, and treatment planning services. This encyclopedia will serve as a unified, comprehensive reference for professionals involved in the diagnosis, evaluation, and rehabilitation of adult patients and children with neuropsychological disorders.

A new edition of the essential resource on using functional neuroimaging techniques to study the neural basis of cognition, revised with the student in mind; thoroughly updated, with new chapters on fMRI physics, skill learning, emotion and social cognition, and other topics. This essential resource on neuroimaging provides an accessible and user-friendly introduction to the field written by leading researchers. The book describes theoretical and methodological developments in the use of functional neuroimaging techniques to study the neural basis of cognition, from early scientific efforts to link brain and behavior to the latest applications of fMRI and PET methods. The core of the book covers fMRI and PET studies in specific domains: attention, skill learning, semantic memory, language, episodic memory, working memory, and executive functions. By introducing a technique within the description of a domain, the book offers a clear explanation of the process while highlighting its biological context. The emphasis on readability makes Handbook of Functional Neuroimaging of Cognition ideal for classroom use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in cognitive neuroscience. This second edition has been completely updated to reflect new developments in the field, with existing chapters rewritten and new chapters added to each section. The section on history and methods now includes a chapter on the crucial topic of the physics of functional neuroimaging; the chapters on skill learning and executive functions are new to the domain section; and chapters on childhood development and emotion and social cognition have been added to the section on developmental, social, and clinical applications. The color insert has been increased in size, enhancing the visual display of representative findings. Contributors Todd S. Braver, Jeffrey Browndyke, Roberto Cabeza, B.J. Casey, Jody Culham, Clayton E. Curtis, Mark D'Esposito, Sander Daselaar, Lila Davachi, Ian Dobbins, Karl J. Friston, Barry Giesbrecht, Todd C. Handy, Joseph B. Hopfinger, Scott A. Huettel, Irene P. Kan, Alan Kingstone, Eleni Kotsoni, Kevin S. LaBar, George R. Mangun, Gregory McCarthy, Uta Noppeney, Robyn T. Oliver, Elizabeth A. Phelps, Russel A. Poldrack, Cathy J. Price, Marcus E. Raichle, Hannes Ruge, Gaia Scerif, Allen W. Song, Sharon L. Thompson-Schill, Daniel T. Willingham, Richard J.S. Wise

This eBook comprises s series of original research and review articles dealing with the anatomical, genetic, and physiological organization of the auditory system from humans to monkeys and mice.

Shimon Ullman focuses on the processes of high-level vision that deal with the interpretation and use of what is seen in the image. In this book, Shimon Ullman focuses on the processes of high-level vision that deal with the interpretation and use of what is seen in the image. In particular, he examines two major problems. The first, object recognition and classification, involves recognizing objects despite large variations in appearance caused by changes in viewing position, illumination, occlusion, and object shape. The second, visual cognition, involves the extraction of shape properties and spatial relations in the course of performing visual tasks such as object manipulation, planning movements in the environment, or interpreting graphical material such as diagrams, graphs and maps. The book first takes up object recognition and develops a novel approach to the recognition of three-dimensional objects. It then studies a number of related issues in high-level vision, including object classification, scene segmentation, and visual cognition. Using computational considerations discussed throughout the book, along with psychophysical and biological data, the final chapter proposes a model for the general flow of information in the visual cortex. Understanding vision is a key problem in the brain sciences, human cognition, and artificial intelligence. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the theories developed in this work, High-Level Vision will be of interest to readers in all three of these fields.

First published in 1995, this book presents a model for understanding the visual processing underlying perception and action, proposing a broad distinction within the brain between two kinds of vision: conscious perception and unconscious 'online' vision.

How visual content is represented in neuronal population codes and how to analyze such codes with multivariate techniques. Vision is a massively parallel computational process, in which the retinal image is transformed over a sequence of stages so as to emphasize behaviorally relevant information (such as object category and identity) and deemphasize other information (such as viewpoint and lighting). The processes behind vision operate by concurrent computation and message passing among neurons within a visual area and between different areas. The theoretical concept of "population code" encapsulates the idea that visual content is represented at each stage by the pattern of activity across the local population of neurons. Understanding visual population codes ultimately requires multichannel measurement and multivariate analysis of activity patterns. Over the past decade, the multivariate approach has gained significant momentum in vision research. Functional imaging and cell recording measure brain activity in fundamentally different ways, but they now use similar theoretical concepts and mathematical tools in their modeling and analyses. With a focus on the ventral processing stream thought to underlie object recognition, this book presents recent advances in our understanding of visual population codes, novel multivariate pattern-information analysis techniques, and the beginnings of a unified perspective for cell recording and functional imaging. It serves as an introduction, overview, and reference for scientists and students across disciplines who are interested in human and primate vision and, more generally, in understanding how the brain represents and processes information.

Humans possess a remarkable ability to rapidly recognize a wide variety of ecologically important stimuli, stemming in large part from a constellation of specialized regions in the ventral temporal lobe referred to as high-level visual cortex. In adults, neurons causally involved in the perception of faces, words, and scenes cluster in anatomically-anchored locations of ventral temporal cortex, making both their structural and functional signatures readily detectible with in vivo magnetic resonance imaging. Given that the recognition of faces or words are practiced abilities that take time to develop, human ventral temporal cortex (VTC) is an ideal test bed to examine the role of visual experience in shaping the function and structure of cortex throughout development. Indeed, the collection of studies presented here is conducted within VTC, which demonstrate through innovative multi-modal single-subject techniques previously undocumented aspects of functional and anatomical brain development in human visual cortex. These results provide foundational insight into the origins of the human visual system and inform future research regarding what happens when this development goes awry.

Advances in Temporal Lobe Research and Application: 2011 Edition is a ScholarlyBrief™ that delivers timely, authoritative, comprehensive, and specialized information about Temporal Lobe in a concise format. The editors have built Advances in Temporal Lobe Research and Application: 2011 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Temporal Lobe in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Advances in Temporal Lobe Research and Application: 2011 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.