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The visual processing streams for objects and words may interact in the human brain

Shristi Baral1,*, Riitta Salmelin1,2, and Marijn van Vliet1 1 Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, Finland 2 Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, Finland * Corresponding author: shristi.baral@aalto.fi

Project Summary

The brain's ability to process written words and objects has been well-studied, but often in isolation. A key question remains: how does orthographic processing interact with visual object recognition, given that both share the same pathways? Since object recognition is already developed when we learn to read as a child, the visual system must reorganize to accommodate written words, enabling both modalities to coexist and integrate efficiently. Written words derive meaning from real-world objects and concepts, requiring the brain’s ventral stream to reorganise and process both modalities.

The question is how written words (e.g., "CUP") and visual objects (e.g., a picture of a cup) lead to the same amodal neural representation. We investigated this using Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) between a CNN-based fusion model and MEG data.

Aalto University, School of Science Department of Neuroimaging and Biomedical Engineering