Scene-selective brain regions respond to embedded objects of a scene

Abstract

Objects are fundamental to scene understanding. Scenes are defined by embedded objects and how we interact with them. Paradoxically, scene processing in the brain is typically discussed in contrast to object processing. Using the BOLD5000 dataset (Chang et al., 2019), we examined whether objects within a scene predicted the neural representation of scenes, as measured by fMRI in humans. Stimuli included 1,179 unique scenes across 18 semantic categories. Object composition of scenes were compared across scene exemplars in different semantic categories, and separately, in exemplars of the same category. Neural representations in scene- and object-preferring brain regions were significantly related to which objects were in a scene, with the effect at times stronger in the scene-preferring regions. The object model accounted for more variance when comparing scenes within the same semantic category to scenes from different categories. Thus, the functional role of scene-preferring regions should include the processing of objects. This suggests visual processing regions may be better characterized with respect to which processes are engaged when interacting with the stimulus category, such as processing groups of objects in scenes, or processing a single object in our foreground, rather than the stimulus category itself.