TY - JOUR
T1 - Neural correlates of incongruous visual information
T2 - An event-related fMRI study
AU - Michelon, Pascale
AU - Snyder, Abraham Z.
AU - Buckner, Randy L.
AU - McAvoy, Mark
AU - Zacks, Jeffrey M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Support was provided by grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. We thank Laura E. Williams for her help during the scanning sessions.
PY - 2003/8/1
Y1 - 2003/8/1
N2 - Incongruous information is better remembered than ordinary information. This result has been attributed both to semantic incongruity and surprise. To determine the contribution of each factor, we performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants viewed pictures depicting ordinary and incongruous objects (e.g., head of a wrench fused onto a sheep body). To maximize surprise we administered novel incongruent pictures infrequently in an initial scan. (This scan also included infrequent color-inverted pictures as a control for frequency.) To obtain a pure measure of the effect of incongruity we conducted a second scan in which participants viewed equal numbers of ordinary and incongruous pictures. Signal increases were greater for incongruous versus ordinary and oddball stimuli throughout the ventral and dorsal visual pathways, and in prefrontal cortex bilaterally. Signal decreases were larger for incongruous than for ordinary stimuli bilaterally in lateral parietal regions. A subset of regions near the right frontal operculum and extending laterally responded only to, or more strongly to, infrequent incongruous pictures. A second, purely behavioral, experiment involving a separate group of participants demonstrated that incongruous pictures were better recognized than ordinary pictures. We interpret our results as suggesting that, although correlates of a surprise response can be observed, better memory for incongruous visual information is attributable mainly to more processing and, consequently, better encoding.
AB - Incongruous information is better remembered than ordinary information. This result has been attributed both to semantic incongruity and surprise. To determine the contribution of each factor, we performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants viewed pictures depicting ordinary and incongruous objects (e.g., head of a wrench fused onto a sheep body). To maximize surprise we administered novel incongruent pictures infrequently in an initial scan. (This scan also included infrequent color-inverted pictures as a control for frequency.) To obtain a pure measure of the effect of incongruity we conducted a second scan in which participants viewed equal numbers of ordinary and incongruous pictures. Signal increases were greater for incongruous versus ordinary and oddball stimuli throughout the ventral and dorsal visual pathways, and in prefrontal cortex bilaterally. Signal decreases were larger for incongruous than for ordinary stimuli bilaterally in lateral parietal regions. A subset of regions near the right frontal operculum and extending laterally responded only to, or more strongly to, infrequent incongruous pictures. A second, purely behavioral, experiment involving a separate group of participants demonstrated that incongruous pictures were better recognized than ordinary pictures. We interpret our results as suggesting that, although correlates of a surprise response can be observed, better memory for incongruous visual information is attributable mainly to more processing and, consequently, better encoding.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0042425685&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00111-3
DO - 10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00111-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 12948716
AN - SCOPUS:0042425685
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 19
SP - 1612
EP - 1626
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
IS - 4
ER -