Category-selectivity, again: Hand-selective Visual Areas Support Action-related Behavioural Goals

COEX 

The occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) contains areas that preferentially respond to specific object categories like faces, body parts, and tools, with a mirrored organization across its lateral and ventral parts (Kanwisher, 2010; Taylor & Downing, 2011). However, the exact role of these areas in supporting action or object recognition and the dimensions they represent are still debated (Bracci & Op de Beeck, 2023; Peelen & Downing, 2017). Here, we investigate the role of the action dimension as one of the possible organizing principles of object space in visual cortex, by investigating the selectivity and the multivariate representations of category-selective clusters.