High-dimensional topographic organization of visual features in the primate temporal lobe

Abstract The inferotemporal cortex supports our supreme object recognition ability. Numerous studies have been conducted to elucidate the functional organization of this brain area, but there are still important questions that remain unanswered, including how this organization differs between humans and non-human primates. Here, we use deep neural networks trained on object categorization to construct a 25-dimensional space of visual features, and systematically measure the spatial organization of feature preference in both male monkey brains and human brains using fMRI. These feature maps allow us to predict the selectivity of a previously unknown region in monkey brains, which is corroborated by additional fMRI and electrophysiology experiments. These maps also enable quantitative analyses of the topographic organization of the temporal lobe, demonstrating the existence of a pair of orthogonal gradients that differ in spatial scale and revealing significant differences in the functional organization of high-level visual areas between monkey and human brains.