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. 2024 Jul;229(6):1471-1493.
doi: 10.1007/s00429-024-02811-6. Epub 2024 Jun 5.

Selective activations and functional connectivities to the sight of faces, scenes, body parts and tools in visual and non-visual cortical regions leading to the human hippocampus

Edmund T Rolls  1   2   3 , Jianfeng Feng  4   5 , Ruohan Zhang  6
Affiliations

Selective activations and functional connectivities to the sight of faces, scenes, body parts and tools in visual and non-visual cortical regions leading to the human hippocampus

Edmund T Rolls et al. Brain Struct Funct. 2024 Jul.

Abstract

Connectivity maps are now available for the 360 cortical regions in the Human Connectome Project Multimodal Parcellation atlas. Here we add function to these maps by measuring selective fMRI activations and functional connectivity increases to stationary visual stimuli of faces, scenes, body parts and tools from 956 HCP participants. Faces activate regions in the ventrolateral visual cortical stream (FFC), in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) visual stream for face and head motion; and inferior parietal visual (PGi) and somatosensory (PF) regions. Scenes activate ventromedial visual stream VMV and PHA regions in the parahippocampal scene area; medial (7m) and lateral parietal (PGp) regions; and the reward-related medial orbitofrontal cortex. Body parts activate the inferior temporal cortex object regions (TE1p, TE2p); but also visual motion regions (MT, MST, FST); and the inferior parietal visual (PGi, PGs) and somatosensory (PF) regions; and the unpleasant-related lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Tools activate an intermediate ventral stream area (VMV3, VVC, PHA3); visual motion regions (FST); somatosensory (1, 2); and auditory (A4, A5) cortical regions. The findings add function to cortical connectivity maps; and show how stationary visual stimuli activate other cortical regions related to their associations, including visual motion, somatosensory, auditory, semantic, and orbitofrontal cortex value-related, regions.

Keywords: Activations to faces, places, body parts, and tools; Cortical scene regions; Human connectome; Human visual cortex; Human visual pathways; Ventromedial visual cortical stream.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The Human Connectome Project Working Memory task for the 0-back condition (Barch et al. 2013). Four stimulus types were used in a block design, faces, places, tools, and body parts. + indicates a fixation cross presented in the inter-trial interval. Examples of the large set of stimuli used are shown in this figure. In the 0-back condition used for most of the analyses described here, a target cue was presented at the start of each block in the cue period, and the participant had to respond ‘target’ to any presentation of that stimulus in the block. There were 2 runs in which data were acquired, and each run included 8 task blocks, 4 task blocks for 0-back, and 4 task blocks for 2-back. Each stimulus type (faces, scenes etc.) thus had 20 trials as 0-back, and 20 trials as 2-back. A The task design in which runs of a task such as the 0-back task were performed. Each run consisted of a 2.5 s cue period followed by 10 trials in which a stimulus was shown for 2 s followed by a 0.5 s fixation period. The 10 stimuli in each run were thus presented over a 25 s period. Each run consisted of either faces, or places or body parts or tools. On 50% of runs, 0-back faces, places and tools were preceded by a 15 s screen showing only a fixation cross. B–E Examples of the different 0-back runs
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Brain regions in the left hemisphere with significant differences in the average BOLD signal for the faces, scenes, body parts, and tools compared to the mean of these conditions in the 0-back working memory task, after Bonferroni correction (α = 0.05). Panels A, C show the top 30% of brain regions with significant differences for the 0-back faces and 0-back body parts conditions contrasted with the mean of the four conditions, respectively. Panels B, D display all the brain regions with significant differences for the 0-back scenes and 0-back tools conditions compared to the mean of these four conditions, respectively. The selection of the top 30% of cortical regions in A and C allows the main differences between the four stimulus type, faces, places, body parts, and tools to be easily visualised, but for completeness Fig. S3C shows the same figure as this but without any selection of the top 30%. The corresponding figure for the right hemisphere is in Fig. S2
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The cortical regions exhibiting significant differences in the average BOLD signal between the baseline prestimulus period preceding the 0-back blocks (shown in Fig. 1) before the BOLD signal had responded to the stimuli, and the last 20 timepoints within the 0-back blocks (when the BOLD signal response to the visual stimuli was occurring) for each of the four stimulus types (faces, places, body parts, and tools) after Bonferroni correction (α = 0.05) across 956 participants. The effect size as indicated by Cohen’s d is indicated. The activations are shown in red to yellow. The top 50 cortical regions with significant increases in the BOLD signal are shown out of the 180 cortical regions in the left hemisphere. The baseline prestimulus period was for the last 5 s of the 15 s fixation time and the initial 15 timepoints with a TR of 0.72 s starting when the cue was shown in a run (see Fig. 1)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
The lower left triangle shows the matrix of functional connectivity differences between 0-back faces and the mean of all 0-back conditions with the Cohen’s d values showing the effect size of the differences. The matrix is for the functional connectivities in the left hemisphere, as listed in Table S1, with V1, V2, V3 … at the top of the y axis and the left of the x axis. The upper triangle matrix shows the Cohen’s d values of positive significant links after FDR correction (α = 0.05). These results were from 956 participants in the HCP dataset. All the values shown in the matrix were limited to the range from − 0.5 to 0.5. The covariates regressed out in this analysis were sex, age, drinker status, smoking status, education qualification and head motion
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
The lower left triangle shows the matrix of functional connectivity differences between 0-back scenes and the mean of all 0-back conditions with the Cohen’s d values showing the effect size of the differences. The matrix is for the functional connectivities in the left hemisphere, as listed in Table S1, with V1, V2, V3 … at the top of the y axis and the left of the x axis. The upper triangle matrix shows the Cohen’s d values of significant positive links after FDR correction (α = 0.05). These results were from 956 participants in the HCP dataset. All the values shown in the matrix were limited to the range from − 0.6 to 0.6. The covariates regressed out in this analysis were sex, age, drinker status, smoking status, education qualification and head motion
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
The lower left triangle shows the matrix of functional connectivity differences between 0-back body parts and the mean of all 0-back conditions with the Cohen’s d values showing the effect size of the differences. The matrix is for the functional connectivities in the left hemisphere, as listed in Table S1, with V1, V2, V3 … at the top of the y axis and the left of the x axis. The upper triangle matrix shows the Cohen’s d values of significant positive links after FDR correction (α = 0.05). These results were from 956 participants in the HCP dataset. All the values shown in the matrix were limited to the range from − 0.5 to 0.5. The covariates regressed out in this analysis were sex, age, drinker status, smoking status, education qualification and head motion
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
The lower left triangle shows the matrix of functional connectivity differences between 0-back tools and the mean of all 0-back conditions with the Cohen’s d values showing the effect size of the differences. The matrix is for the functional connectivities in the left hemisphere, as listed in Table S1, with V1, V2, V3 … at the top of the y axis and the left of the x axis. The upper triangle matrix shows the Cohen’s d values of significant positive links after FDR correction (α = 0.05). These results were from 956 participants in the HCP dataset. All the values shown in the matrix were limited to the range from − 0.5 to 0.5. The covariates regressed out in this analysis were sex, age, drinker status, smoking status, education qualification and head motion
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Brain regions showing significant differences in the average BOLD signal between the four 2-back working memory conditions and their corresponding 0-back conditions, after Bonferroni correction (α = 0.05). Panels A–C display brain regions with significant differences for the 2-back faces, 2-back scenes and 2-back body parts conditions, contrasted with their corresponding 0-back conditions, respectively. Panel D shows brain regions with significant differences for the 2-back tools condition compared to the 0-back tools condition
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