Examining the representational content of perirhinal cortex and posterior ventral visual pathway regions when maintenance of visual information is interrupted

Sep 21, 2019Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior

How memory-related and visual brain areas hold visual information when interrupted

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Abstract

The perirhinal cortex (PRC) reflects the information content of studied items even when conflicting stimuli are present.

Functional MRI was used to examine the ventral visual pathway (VVP) during a visual delayed match-to-sample task.
During the maintenance phase, participants were presented with interfering items from a different stimulus category.
Lateral occipital and fusiform regions showed representational content aligned with the currently viewed stimulus.
In contrast, the PRC maintained information about the studied item despite the presence of interference.
These findings suggest a specialized division of labor in the VVP, with the PRC demonstrating more robust representations against ongoing perceptual activity.

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The perirhinal cortex (PRC) is known to support recognition memory, working memory, and perception for objects. Often, information must be maintained in working memory in the face of ongoing visual perception, raising the question of how PRC and other regions supporting object representation deal with this conflict. Here, we used functional MRI to examine the representational content of human ventral visual pathway (VVP) regions, including perirhinal cortex (PRC), during a visual delayed match-to-sample task. Critically, interfering items from a different stimulus category to the target were presented to participants during the maintenance phase, creating conflict between the contents of working memory and ongoing perception. Using representational similarity analysis, we compared information content across study, interference and test phases to models that differed in the extent to which they predicted that information content would be maintained during the delay period and perturbed by interference. This revealed that lateral occipital and fusiform regions are best fit by models that reflect the stimulus content of the item currently being viewed, whereas PRC reflects the information content of the studied item, even when an interfering stimulus is presented during the delay. This division of labor within the VVP sheds light on the specialized nature of representations in VVP regions, including PRC. Our findings support a representational hierarchical understanding of medial temporal lobe function which posits that representations at the most anterior aspect of the VVP are more robust to ongoing perceptual activity.

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Examining the representational content of perirhinal cortex and posterior ventral visual pathway regions when maintenance of visual information is interrupted

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