Brains uses different circuits to process rigid objects and substances
The findings suggest that the brain may have different ways of representing these two categories of material, similar to the artificial physics engines that are used to create video game graphics. These engines usually represent a 3D object as a mesh, while fluids are represented as sets of particles that can be rearranged.
Brain scans showed distinct activation patterns when participants viewed videos of solids versus fluids in motion.
A new study reveals that our brains separate “stuff” like water and sand from “things” like balls or tools, using specialized circuits in the visual cortex. Functional MRI scans showed distinct areas within the ventral and dorsal visual pathways that preferentially respond to the fluidity or rigidity of materials.
This separation may help the brain simulate how to physically interact with different materials—whether to grasp, pour, scoop, or avoid. The researchers suggest our brain may be operating much like a video game engine, running different physics simulations for fluids and solids.
Regions in the brain’s ventral visual pathway that are involved in recognizing the shapes of 3D objects, including an area called the lateral occipital complex (LOC).
A region in the brain’s dorsal visual pathway, known as the frontoparietal physics network (FPN), analyzes the physical properties of materials, such as mass or stability.
To explore how the brain processes these materials, Paulun used a software program designed for visual effects artists to create more than 100 video clips showing different types of things or stuff interacting with the physical environment.
In these videos, the materials could be seen sloshing or tumbling inside a transparent box, being dropped onto another object, or bouncing or flowing down a set of stairs.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the visual cortex of people as they watched the videos. They found that both the LOC and the FPN respond to “things” and “stuff,” but that each pathway has distinctive subregions that respond more strongly to one or the other.
“Both the ventral and the dorsal visual pathway seem to have this subdivision, with one part responding more strongly to ‘things,’ and the other responding more strongly to ‘stuff,’” Paulun says. “We haven’t seen this before because nobody has asked that before.”
source: https://neurosciencenews.com/neural-sorting-visual-neuroscience-29542/
Dissociable Cortical Regions Represent Things and Stuff in the Human Brain