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Poster B in Poster Session B: Tuesday, August 4, 2:00 – 3:45 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Task Demands Dynamically Structure Feature Selection, Routing, and Integration in the Human Brain

Yuening Yan¹, Jiayu Zhan², Yaocong Duan¹, Oliver G. B. Garrod¹, Robin A.A. Ince¹, Chen Zhou¹, Rachael E. Jack¹, Philippe G. Schyns¹; ¹University of Glasgow, ²Peking University

Presenter: Yuening Yan

Flexible visual categorisation requires the brain to select task-relevant information from complex stimuli and transform it through structured computations. Yet how task demands control these computations in the human brain remains unclear. Dynamic faces provide a powerful test case because they convey stable identity through 3D shape and transient emotion through 4D movement. Using generative 4D face modelling, participant-specific MEG (N = 24), and information-theoretic analyses, we show that task demands organise a structured feature-processing architecture. Task relevance first gates feature representations in occipital cortex, maintaining relevant features while suppressing irrelevant ones. Maintained features are then routed through pathway-specific channels, with 3D identity features directed to the ventral pathway and 4D emotion features to the lateral pathway. Finally, task-relevant features converge in temporal cortex, where identity and emotion are synergistically integrated for learned identities. These findings reveal how task demands dynamically organise feature selection, routing and integration, constraining the computations that support flexible visual categorisation.

Topic Area: Computational Models of Vision & Visual Cortex