RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Neural codes of architectural styles
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 045245
DO 10.1101/045245
A1 Heeyoung Choo
A1 Jack Nasar
A1 Bardia Nikrahei
A1 Dirk B. Walther
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/22/045245.abstract
AB Images of iconic buildings, for example, the Empire State Building, instantly transport us to New York City. Despite the substantial impact of architectural design on people’s visual experience of built environments, we know little about its neural representation in the human brain. We have found patterns of neural activity associated with specific architectural styles in a network of several high-level visual brain regions including the scene-selective parahippocampal place area (PPA). Surprisingly, this network, which is characterized by correlated error patterns, includes the fusiform face area. Accuracy of decoding architectural styles from the PPA was negatively correlated with expertise in architecture, indicating a shift from purely visual cues to the use of domain knowledge with increasing expertise. Our study showcases that neural representations of architectural styles in the human brain are driven not only by perceptual features but also by semantic and cultural facets, such as expertise for architectural styles.