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  • Review Article
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Interpreting fMRI data: maps, modules and dimensions

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 9, pages 123–135 (2008)Cite this article

Key Points

  • Recent fMRI studies have revealed functional specificity in the normal human brain at an increasingly fine scale, suggesting the existence of graded maps and distinct functional modules for a wide variety of functional properties.

  • One intriguing finding is the functional organization of the ventral visual pathway, which is characterized by strong selectivity for particular object categories (faces, bodies, et cetera) at the levels both of whole cortical regions and individual neurons.

  • In some cases apparently modular cortical regions can turn out to be parts of larger maps. For example, orientation columns in the primary visual cortex and barrels in the primary somatosensory cortex are embedded in a large cortical map. The same may be true of the face-, place- and body-selective areas of the ventral visual pathway, but it is still unclear whether the larger-scale map is strong enough to dismiss the possibility that these selective areas function as distinct modules.

  • The ventral visual pathway might contain maps for multiple stimulus properties, including a shape map, a process map, a semantic association map and an eccentricity map. However, studies have not yet been able to explain the strong functional specificity for, for example, faces and bodies by simpler or more unambiguously defined properties than the intuitive notion of 'object category'.

  • The strong category selectivity that is seen for faces and other object categories might arise from the nonlinear combination of multiple maps for simpler functional properties. This framework reconciles the existence of graded cortical maps for multiple stimulus properties with the existence of distinct functional modules for particular object categories.

Abstract

Neuroimaging research over the past decade has revealed a detailed picture of the functional organization of the human brain. Here we focus on two fundamental questions that are raised by the detailed mapping of sensory and cognitive functions and illustrate these questions with findings from the object-vision pathway. First, are functionally specific regions that are located close together best understood as distinct cortical modules or as parts of a larger-scale cortical map? Second, what functional properties define each cortical map or module? We propose a model in which overlapping continuous maps of simple features give rise to discrete modules that are selective for complex stimuli.

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Figure 1: Typical locations of category-selective regions in the human ventral visual cortex.
Figure 2: Object category is an important factor in the mental space of objects that underlies similarity judgments.
Figure 3: The clear boundaries between regions that are selective for different object categories reflect the clear boundaries that exist between object categories in mental object space.
Figure 4: Functional specificity for familiar categories of objects and for initially novel categories of objects.
Figure 5: The existence of maps for multiple functional properties and different ways in which they might be combined.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Baker, J. DiCarlo, B. Farley, G. Kayaert and J. Wagemans for their helpful comments on the manuscript. N.K. was supported by grant EY13455 and H.P.O. was supported by the Human Frontier Science Program, the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders, and grants IMPH/06/GHW and CREA/07/004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Hans P. Op de Beeck

  2. McGovern Institute for Brain Research & Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Johannes Haushofer & Nancy G. Kanwisher

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  1. Hans P. Op de Beeck
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  2. Johannes Haushofer
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Correspondence to Hans P. Op de Beeck or Nancy G. Kanwisher.

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Glossary

Map

A clustering of neurons with similar functional properties that is characterized by a gradual progression of preferred stimulus values across the cortical sheet.

Module

A clustering of neurons with similar functional properties that is characterized by discrete regions with clear boundaries across which there is no relation in preferred stimulus values.

Multi-voxel pattern analyses

Multivariate analysis of the spatial distribution of fMRI responses across large sets of voxels.

Eccentricity

The distance of the retinal stimulus position from the fovea (the central area of the retina that provides the best visual acuity).

fMRI adaptation

A technique that makes use of the fact that the fMRI response to two sequentially presented stimuli is smaller (adapted) when the stimuli are identical or similar compared with when they are different.

Ocular dominance

The term that describes the characteristic of cells in the striate cortex to respond more strongly to input from one eye than from the other.

Foveation

Visual detection of an object by the fovea, the central area of the retina that provides the best visual acuity.

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Op de Beeck, H., Haushofer, J. & Kanwisher, N. Interpreting fMRI data: maps, modules and dimensions. Nat Rev Neurosci 9, 123–135 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2314

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