TY - JOUR T1 - Neural codes of architectural styles JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/045245 SP - 045245 AU - Heeyoung Choo AU - Jack Nasar AU - Bardia Nikrahei AU - Dirk B. Walther Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/22/045245.abstract N2 - 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. ER -