Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Task-Dependent Warping of Semantic Representations During Search for Visual Action Categories

View ORCID ProfileMo Shahdloo, View ORCID ProfileEmin Çelik, View ORCID ProfileBurcu A. Ürgen, View ORCID ProfileJack L. Gallant, View ORCID ProfileTolga Çukur
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.17.448789
Mo Shahdloo
1Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford/UK
2National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM), Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
3Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Mo Shahdloo
  • For correspondence: mo.shahdloo@psy.ox.ac.uk cukur@ee.bilkent.edu.tr
Emin Çelik
2National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM), Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
5Neuroscience Program, Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Emin Çelik
Burcu A. Ürgen
2National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM), Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
4Department of Psychology, Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
5Neuroscience Program, Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Burcu A. Ürgen
Jack L. Gallant
6Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA/USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Jack L. Gallant
Tolga Çukur
2National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM), Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
3Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
5Neuroscience Program, Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, Bilkent University, Ankara/Turkey
6Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA/USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Tolga Çukur
  • For correspondence: mo.shahdloo@psy.ox.ac.uk cukur@ee.bilkent.edu.tr
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Summary

Object and action perception in cluttered dynamic natural scenes relies on efficient allocation of limited brain resources to prioritize the attended targets over distractors. It has been suggested that during visual search for objects, distributed semantic representation of hundreds of object categories is warped to expand the representation of targets. Yet, little is known about whether and where in the brain visual search for action categories modulates semantic representations. To address this fundamental question, we studied human brain activity recorded via functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects viewed natural movies and searched for either communication or locomotion actions. We find that attention directed to action categories elicits tuning shifts that warp semantic representations broadly across neocortex, and that these shifts interact with intrinsic selectivity of cortical voxels for target actions. These results suggest that attention serves to facilitate task performance during social interactions by dynamically shifting semantic selectivity towards target actions, and that tuning shifts are a general feature of conceptual representations in the brain.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • ↵† Lead contact

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted June 17, 2021.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Task-Dependent Warping of Semantic Representations During Search for Visual Action Categories
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Task-Dependent Warping of Semantic Representations During Search for Visual Action Categories
Mo Shahdloo, Emin Çelik, Burcu A. Ürgen, Jack L. Gallant, Tolga Çukur
bioRxiv 2021.06.17.448789; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.17.448789
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Task-Dependent Warping of Semantic Representations During Search for Visual Action Categories
Mo Shahdloo, Emin Çelik, Burcu A. Ürgen, Jack L. Gallant, Tolga Çukur
bioRxiv 2021.06.17.448789; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.17.448789

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3688)
  • Biochemistry (7783)
  • Bioengineering (5673)
  • Bioinformatics (21267)
  • Biophysics (10574)
  • Cancer Biology (8170)
  • Cell Biology (11929)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6757)
  • Ecology (10394)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13853)
  • Genetics (9702)
  • Genomics (13063)
  • Immunology (8136)
  • Microbiology (19976)
  • Molecular Biology (7841)
  • Neuroscience (43032)
  • Paleontology (318)
  • Pathology (1278)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2258)
  • Physiology (3350)
  • Plant Biology (7221)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1311)
  • Synthetic Biology (2000)
  • Systems Biology (5533)
  • Zoology (1127)