Attentional Selection from Natural Scenes
The visual system has an extraordinary capability to extract categorical information when searching complex natural scenes. For example, subjects are able to rapidly detect the presence of object categories such as animals or vehicles in novel scenes that are presented very briefly. In my talk, I will discuss recent studies that are aimed at elucidating the neural basis underlying such visual search at the level of object categories in the human brain. In addition, I will revisit the representation of categorical object information in two lesion models: in agnosia, when object-selective cortex is dysfunctional, and in amnesia, when major feedback input to object representations is interrupted.