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# Reversible Inactivation of Different Millimeter-Scale Regions of Primate IT Results in Different Patterns of Core Object Recognition Deficits

## Details

**Authors** Rajalingham and DiCarlo

**Year** 2018

**Publisher** Neuron

**Discipline** Neuroscience

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.02.001) 
10.1016/j.neuron.2019.02.001

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

What role does the inferotemporal cortex have in visual and object distingushing?

### What they found (results)

The inferotemporal cortex is a part of the brain where visual distinctions are made.

## Commentary

### In short

An example of someone finding a physical location in the brain for the D pattern.

### In more detail

In 2018, Rajalingham and DiCarlo examined the inferotemporal cortex and its role in visual processing and object Distinguishing. “Extensive research suggests that the inferior temporal (IT) population supports visual object recognition behavior… Moreover, inactivating different IT subregions resulted in different patterns of subtask deficits, predicted by each subregion’s neuronal object discriminability… Taken together, these results provide direct evidence that the IT cortex causally supports general core object recognition and that the underlying IT coding dimensions are topographically organized.” They conducted their research on object Distinction by “turning off” patches of the IT cortex using muscimol. They confirmed that areas/patches of the brain were devoted to face-recognition and also that the IT cortex is divided into areas that handle object recognition as well. When they turned off a patch, the subjects struggled with certain aspects of object recognition depending on the focus of the task. They wrote that, “individual neurons in the IT cortex are selective to complex visual features in images and exhibit remarkable tolerance to changes in viewing parameters.” The researchers made it clear that there was not a direct correlation between the task they struggled with and a corresponding area in the IT cortex. In other words, when a monkey struggled to Distinguish between cars (as a result of a turned off patch), that did not mean that there is a “car patch” in the IT cortex. They therefore stated that these findings hold for any kind of Distinction happening in the IT cortex, and they conclude that the IT cortex is an important area of the brain in which Distinctions are made. Finding a neurological placement in which Distinctions occur is significant, and this study provides evidence that the cognitive process of Distinction-making is not uniquely human, as the subjects in this study were monkeys. This drives the argument for the universality of the Distinction pattern of mind even further. In fact, once we are aware of the Distinctions we make, we begin to see examples of them all around us.

**Patterns it shows** D

**How to cite this** Rajalingham and DiCarlo (2018). Reversible Inactivation of Different Millimeter-Scale Regions of Primate IT Results in Different Patterns of Core Object Recognition Deficits. Neuron.