The Origins of Scene Development

Stephanie Wahab is a recent graduate who majored in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on scene processing under Dr. Daniel Dilks.

Humans recognize a “scene” or place in a fraction of a second and almost simultaneously navigate that scene flawlessly and effortlessly. This remarkable ability is thought to rely on three distinct brain regions that are selectively involved in recognizing scenes and objects. These regions include the occipital place area (OPA) (Dilks et al., 2013), the retrosplenial complex (RSC) (Maguire, 2001), and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) (Epstein and Kanwisher, 1998). While each of these regions show clear scene selectivity, responding more strongly to images of scenes than images of objects or faces, the precise role each region plays in scene processing is still unclear, and the subject of ongoing debate.

The Dilks Lab looks into scientific inquiries related to neuropsychological phenomena, as the results of such provide further understanding of the human brain and contribute to the fields of science. Such topics of interest include the functional organization of the visual cortex and how the visual system changes in adulthood. More information concerning specific neuropsychological topics and findings by the Dilks Lab can be found on our website.

My specific research in the Dilks Lab has surrounded the origins of visual development and how humans process objects, scenes, and navigate the world around them. There is a proposed division of labor among the three aforementioned brain regions selectively involved in object and scene recognition. In contrast to object processing, however, less is known about scene processing, and especially about the development of the scene processing system. A primary inquiry concerns whether scene navigation and categorization streams exhibit differential developmental profiles. For my first project in the Dilks lab, I helped address this question by conducting a study of scene navigation and categorization abilities in children and adults. Critically, however, there are several potential caveats to the design of our past experiment, as navigation and categorization tasks differ substantially in their reliance on working memory. I have thus revised a follow-up experiment to control for such caveats in the experimental design. Participants will now perform a categorization task and a navigation task while viewing images of scenes (i.e. bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms). During the categorization task, participants will imagine they are standing in the room, and indicate via button press whether they are in a bedroom, kitchen, or living room. During the navigation task, participants will imagine walking through a room on the same stimuli (bedroom/kitchen/living room) and indicate via button press whether they can leave through a door on the left, center, or right wall by following a path on the floor that only connects to one of the three doors.

Kitchen

Living Room

Bedroom

Crucially, this design allows us to address the concerns related to our previous experiment in a number of ways. First, both tasks involve rapid perceptual judgments, controlling for the possibility that differences in general task demands (e.g., working memory recruitment) could explain differences in performance across the navigation and categorization tasks. Second, both tasks will be completed on the exact same stimuli, ruling out the possibility that differences in the stimuli could explain our results. Third, the mode of response is well matched between the two tasks, with both requiring participants to press one of three buttons indicating their response (i.e., for the categorization task: 1) bedroom, 2) kitchen, 3) living room; for the navigation task: 1) left door, 2) middle door, 3) right door). A final advantage of the current task is that it is well suited for an fMRI experiment, due to the carefully design controls we have discussed above. Understanding the neural correlates of this task would allow us to draw tighter conclusions about the development of the cortical scene processing system based on our findings—a topic others in my lab have begun to pursue.

References

Dilks, D. D., Julian, J. B., Paunov, A. M., & Kanwisher, N. (2013). The occipital place area is causally and selectively involved in scene perception. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(4), 1331-1336a. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4081-12.2013

Maguire, E. A. (2001). The retrosplenial contribution to human navigation: a review of lesion and neuroimaging findings. Scand J Psychol, 42(3), 225-238.

Epstein, R., & Kanwisher, N. (1998). A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature, 392, 598-601.

Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Independent Research Grants.