Figure 1.

a, High-resolution structural MRI of patient M.C.'s brain. M.C.'s lesion is displayed in a series of consecutive ascending axial slices from ventral on left to dorsal on right, with the relative slice positioning shown (inset, lower right). M.C.'s lesion encompasses most of visual cortex, posterior lateral and ventral temporal cortex, and part of right posterior parietal cortex. Importantly, M.C.'s lesion includes visual-object-selective area LOC. All MRI images are displayed in neurological convention (LH on left side of image). b, fMRI response to visually-presented colored objects versus scrambled control stimuli in patient M.C. (left) versus an age-matched neurologically intact observer (right). M.C. showed virtually no neural response to visual objects (p < 0.001, activation shown in orange). Only a few small clusters were observed within the left mid-inferior temporal gyrus (mITG), left dorsal intraparietal sulcus (dIPS), right precentral sulcus (preCS), and the bilaterally in the cerebellum. There was very little increase in M.C.'s fMRI response to visual objects even at a more relaxed statistical threshold (p < 0.01 uncorrected; red). An age-matched control, in contrast, showed a typical pattern of strong bilateral activation extending from lateral occipital to ventral temporal cortex and dorsally into parietal cortex. The point of peak activation for visual objects in the control is marked with a black crosshair (Talairach z = −12). For comparative purposes, the corresponding point is also demarcated with a white crosshair on M.C.'s anatomical image. Although some of the objects > textures activation shown for the control observer (p < 0.001) overlaps with regions of spared tissue within M.C.'s ventral temporal cortex, M.C. nevertheless did not show corresponding activation within the undamaged regions of cortex, suggesting that her lesion has affected regions critical for processing visual object shape (e.g., area LO).