Treedom Beiyin Zhang¹ (), Seoyoung Lee², Olivia S. Cheung^1,3; ¹New York University Abu Dhabi, ²University of Chicago, ³Center for Brain and Health, NYUAD Research Institute

Scene perception requires maintaining a stable representation of the environment while updating information as we move our eyes, heads, or bodies. What are the respective contributions of various regions in the scene-selective cortical network, namely bilateral parahippocampal place area (PPA), occipital place area (OPA), and retrosplenial cortex (RSC), in balancing these demands? Using fMRI, we investigated this question by showing participants (N=20) scene segments that varied in two types of content: each image trio showed either identical or partially overlapping views of a scene, or completely different scenes. For overlapping views, each scene was divided into three segments (66% overlap between the first and second segments, and 33% overlap between the first and third segments). We hypothesized that scene-selective regions responsible for maintaining stable representations would show differential neural activity between identical/overlapping views of the same scene, compared with completely different scenes. Conversely, the regions responsible for updating representations would show differential neural activity between identical views vs. all other conditions, since both overlapping views of the same scene and completely different scenes require updates. Univariate and pairwise classification analyses revealed that the three regions showed different sensitivity to maintenance vs. updating of scene information. Specifically, PPA showed sensitivity to both maintenance and updating, with stronger activity for completely different scenes than overlapping views, and stronger activity for overlapping than identical views of a scene. These differences were confirmed using classification analysis. OPA showed some evidence for maintenance, as revealed by classification analysis, but consistent evidence for updating, as revealed by univariate and classification analysis. RSC, however, only showed consistent sensitivity to updating. A control region (lateral occipital complex) did not show evidence for either maintenance or updating. These findings highlight the complementary roles of maintenance in ventral/lateral regions and of updating in all regions in the scene-selective cortical network.

Acknowledgements: The research was supported by a faculty grant (AD174) and a Tamkeen NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute grant (CG012) to O.S.C., and a NYU Abu Dhabi capstone grant to S.L.