Task-related laterality effects in the lateral occipital complex

Using functional imaging, we investigated the effects of two different tasks on activation in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). Alternating blocks of intact and scrambled objects were presented. In one task, subjects responded when an object repeated (matching task). In a second task subjects silently named objects (naming task). Identical objects (tools, animals and letters) were presented for both tasks. A relative measure of the number of voxels activated in LOC in left and right hemispheres was calculated for each task across a range of thresholds. Also the effects of task demands on category specific areas in LOC were examined. The object matching task resulted in proportionally more activity in the right hemisphere. The object naming task resulted in proportionally more activity in the left hemisphere, most prominently in the anterior portion of LOC. Effectively, changing the task changed the lateralization of activation to intact objects in LOC. In contrast, changing the task did not change the lateralization of category-specific activations. The results suggest that there are task-related top-down influences on the activation of neural populations in LOC as a whole, but the lateralization of category-specific regions in LOC is independent of task demands and may reflect bottom-up processing.