Multiple forms of sensory reinstatement in category-selective cortex

Authors

Prasad, D., Steel, A., Robertson, C. E.

Abstract

Visual recall is classically thought to depend on reinstatement: areas engaged when encoding a visual input are similarly reactivated when remembering it. Here we investigated if reinstatement might be differently implemented across the diverse category-selective systems of visual cortex. Using fMRI in 25 participants, we assessed possible reinstatement organizations across scene-, face-, and body-selective cortex. We asked whether memory reactivates the same category-selective areas engaged during perception, whether it engages same or distinct vertices, and whether perceptual-mnemonic distinctions were topographically organized. All regions were selectively engaged during both perception and memory, though memory activity was weaker overall. At the vertex-level, most regions -- including body-selective LOS, ITG, MTG; face-selective FFA1, FFA2; and scene-selective PPA -- showed classic reinstatement, with memory enriched in the most perceptually selective vertices. In contrast, OFA and OPA showed separable perception- and memory-biased vertices. Critically, only scene-selective areas showed topographic distinction: in both PPA and OPA, mnemonic activity was located consistently anterior to perceptual activity, whereas no face- or body-selective areas showed such a distinction. Thus, while all category-selective areas are reactivated during memory, scene-selective cortex topographically separates memory from perception, suggesting different sensory reinstatement implementations across high-level visual cortex, possibly reflecting the distinct computational demands.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 18 Aug 2026.

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