RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Early, color-specific neural responses to object color knowledge
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.02.01.429104
DO 10.1101/2021.02.01.429104
A1 Talia L. Retter
A1 Yi Gao
A1 Fang Jiang
A1 Bruno Rossion
A1 Michael A. Webster
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/01/2021.02.01.429104.abstract
AB Some familiar objects are associated with specific colors, e.g., rubber ducks with yellow. Whether and at what stage neural responses occur to these color associations remain open questions. We tested for frequency-tagged electroencephalogram (EEG) responses to periodic presentations of yellow-associated objects, shown among sequences of non-periodic blue-, red-, and green-associated objects. Both color and grayscale versions of the objects elicited yellow-specific responses, indicating an automatic activation of color knowledge from object shape. Follow-up experiments replicated these effects with green-specific responses, and demonstrated modulated responses for incongruent color-object associations. Importantly, the onset of color-specific responses was as early to grayscale as actually colored stimuli (before 100 ms), the latter additionally eliciting a conventional later response (approximately 140-230 ms) to actual stimulus color. This suggests that the neural representation of familiar objects includes both diagnostic shape and color properties, such that shape can elicit associated color-specific responses before actual color-specific responses occur.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.