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Poster F in Poster Session F: Thursday, August 6, 1:45 – 3:30 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Human early visual cortex represents high-level visual features during recall

Futing Zou¹, Serra E. Favila¹; ¹Brown University

Presenter: Futing Zou

Episodic memory recall is thought to rely on reactivation of cortical activity patterns evoked during perception. However, emerging evidence shows that significant representational changes occur from perception to recall, primarily in the human early visual cortex (EVC). These changes have been observed for simple visual features in well-practiced memories. Yet, it remains unclear whether they generalize to complex natural visual input. Here, we tested whether, and how, the representations of natural scenes transform from perception to recall using representational similarity analysis combined with a deep convolutional neural network model. Across two fMRI studies, we found that EVC aligned most strongly with early model layers during perception. Strikingly, recall showed the reversed pattern with EVC representations shifting towards high-level visual features associated with deep model layers. Together, these results suggest systematic transformations in EVC representations arise from perception to recall.

Topic Area: Memory, Learning & Knowledge Structures