Parietal and frontal object areas underlie perception of object orientation in depth

Recent studies have shown that the human parietal and frontal cortices are involved in object image perception. We hypothesized that the parietal/frontal object areas play a role in differentiating the orientations (i.e., views) of an object. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we compared brain activations while human observers differentiated between two object images in depth-orientation (orientation task) and activations while they differentiated the images in object identity (identity task). The left intraparietal area, right angular gyrus, and right inferior frontal areas were activated more for the orientation task than for the identity task. The occipitotemporal object areas, however, were activated equally for the two tasks. No region showed greater activation for the identity task. These results suggested that the parietal/frontal object areas encode view-dependent visual features and underlie object orientation perception.

► Brain activities during the task to discriminate depth-orientation of common objects. ► Parietal/frontal areas responded more for the orientation task than identification. ► The ventral object-related areas were activated equally for the two tasks. ► The parietal/frontal regions have a role for orientation perception of 3D objects.