Unconscious processing dissociates along categorical lines
Open Access
- 30 September 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 105 (39), 15214-15218
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805867105
Abstract
Visual object recognition is subserved by ventral temporal and occipital regions of the brain. Regions comprising the dorsal visual pathway have not been considered relevant for object recognition, despite strong categorical biases for tool-related information in those regions. Here, we show that dorsal stream processes influence object categorization. We used two techniques to render prime pictures invisible: continuous flash suppression (CFS), which obliterates input into ventral temporal regions, but leaves dorsal stream processes largely unaffected, and backward masking (BM), which allows suppressed information to reach both ventral and dorsal stream structures. Categorically congruent primes suppressed under CFS facilitate categorization of tools but have no effect on nonmanipulable objects; in contrast, primes rendered invisible through BM facilitate target categorization for both tools and nonmanipulable things. Our findings demonstrate that information computed by the dorsal stream is used in object categorization, but only for a category of manipulable objects.Keywords
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