The transverse occipital sulcus and intraparietal sulcus show neural selectivity to object-scene size relationships

To optimize visual search, humans attend to objects with the expected size of the sought target relative to its surrounding scene (object-scene scale consistency). We investigate how the human brain responds to variations in object-scene scale consistency. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging and a voxel-wise feature encoding model to estimate tuning to different object/scene properties. We find that regions involved in scene processing (transverse occipital sulcus) and spatial attention (intraparietal sulcus) have the strongest responsiveness and selectivity to object-scene scale consistency: reduced activity to mis-scaled objects (either unusually smaller or larger). The findings show how and where the brain incorporates object-scene size relationships in the processing of scenes. The response properties of these brain areas might explain why during visual search humans often miss objects that are salient but at atypical sizes relative to the surrounding scene. Lauren Welbourne et al. use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural dynamics linked to how humans process object size in the environment. After showing participants a series of images with appropriately-sized or misscaled objects (such as a giant toothbrush on a bathroom sink), the authors observed that the temporal occipital sulcus and intraparietal sulcus were strongly responsive to normally-sized, but not misscaled, objects, suggesting that object representations in both brain regions incorporate the objects' typical size relationships to the surrounding scene.

Automated summary

The study shows that the human brain responds strongly and selectively to variations in object-scene scale consistency, particularly in regions involved in scene processing and spatial attention. These findings reveal how and where the brain incorporates object-scene size relationships during scene processing.