Research reportIs the whole the sum of its parts? Configural processing of headless bodies in the right fusiform gyrus

•There is clear evidence that we prefer whole bodies compared to the sum of their parts.•The preference for whole bodies seems to be associated with activation pattern in the right fusiform body area.•The preference for whole faces seems to be associated with activation pattern in the right and left fusiform face area.

The current study aimed to explore the functional magnetic resonance (fMR)-adaption effect by presenting intact and scrambled headless bodies and faces. This fMR-adaption paradigm allows investigating processing specificity in distinct brain areas by comparing the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal related to the presentation of same or different pairs of bodies. There is clear evidence that we prefer whole bodies compared to the sum of their parts. This effect refers to a subtype of configural processing termed first-order relational information. The preference for whole bodies seems to be associated with activation pattern in body-sensitive brain regions. However, it remains unclear until now, which cortical area exactly mediates this preference. In the present study, we investigated whether there are neuronal populations that show a selective adaption to whole bodies compared to the sum of their parts. The right fusiform body area (FBA) showed a preference for whole bodies compared to the sum of their parts as the right and left fusiform face area showed a preference for whole faces compared to the sum of their parts. Thus, the present data support the idea that configural body and face processing is mediated by the fusiform gyrus. The current data further support the view that bodies are a special stimulus class with specific characteristics which are processed in body-sensitive brain areas.