Summary: A new study shows that our ability to recall details about familiar objects, like a banana’s typical color, depends on strong connections between visual and language-processing areas of the brain. Researchers found that stroke patients with disrupted neural pathways between these regions had weaker object-color knowledge and altered brain activity.
Using fMRI and diffusion imaging, the team showed that the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC), which processes visual details, works in tandem with language areas like the anterior temporal lobe. This finding reveals that language doesn’t just describe the world—it helps structure how we perceive and store it.
Key Facts:
- Integrated Systems: Object knowledge depends on connections between visual and language regions.
- Brain Damage Impact: Stroke-related disconnection disrupted both brain activity and color-memory accuracy.
- Language Shapes Perception: Language isn’t just descriptive—it helps structure how the brain stores sensory information.
Source: PLOS
Our ability to store information about familiar objects depends on the connection between visual and language processing regions in the brain, according to a study published May 20th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Bo Liu from Beijing Normal University, China, and colleagues.
Seeing an object and knowing visual information about it, like its usual color, activate the same parts of the brain.
Seeing a yellow banana, for example, and knowing that the object represented by the word “banana” is usually yellow, both excite the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC).
However, there’s evidence that parts of the brain involved in language, like the dorsal anterior temporal lobe (ATL), are also involved in this process — dementia patients with ATL damage, for example, struggle with object color knowledge, despite having relatively normal visual processing areas.
To understand whether communication between the brain’s language and sensory association systems is necessary for representing information about objects, the authors tested whether stroke-induced damage to the neural pathways connecting these two systems impacted patients’ ability to match objects to their typical color.
They compared color-identification behavior in 33 stroke patients to 35 demographically-matched controls, using fMRI to record brain activity and diffusion imaging to map the white matter connections between language regions and the VOTC.
The researchers found that stronger connections between language and visual processing regions correlated with stronger object color representations in the VOTC, and supported better performance on object color knowledge tasks.
These effects couldn’t be explained by variations in patients’ stroke lesions, related cognitive processes (like simply recognizing a patch of color), or problems with earlier stages of visual processing.
The authors suggest that these results highlight the sophisticated connection between vision and language in the human brain.
The authors add, “Our findings reveal that the brain’s ability to store and retrieve object perceptual knowledge—like the color of a banana—relies on critical connections between visual and language systems.
“Damage to these connections disrupts both brain activity and behavior, showing that language isn’t just for communication—it fundamentally shapes how sensory experiences are neurally structured into knowledge.”
Funding: This work was supported by the STI2030-Major Project (https://en.most.gov.cn/, 2021ZD0204100 (2021ZD0204104) to Y.B.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (https://www.nsfc.gov.cn/english/site_1/index.html, 31925020 and 82021004 to Y.B., 32171052 to X.S.W., 32071050 to X.Y.W.), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (http://en.moe.gov.cn/, to Y.B.).
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
About this language and visual memory research news
Author: Claire Turner
Source: PLOS
Contact: Claire Turner – PLOS
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Object knowledge representation in the human visual cortex requires a connection with the language system” by Yanchao Bi et al. PLOS Biology
Abstract
Object knowledge representation in the human visual cortex requires a connection with the language system
How world knowledge is stored in the human brain is a central question in cognitive neuroscience. Object knowledge effects have been commonly observed in higher-order sensory association cortices, with the role of language being highly debated.
Using object color as a test case, we investigated whether communication with the language system plays a necessary role in knowledge neural representation in the visual cortex and corresponding behaviors, combining diffusion imaging (measuring white-matter structural integrity), functional MRI (fMRI; measuring functional neural representation of knowledge), and neuropsychological assessments (measuring behavioral integrity) in a group of patients who suffered from stroke (N = 33; 18 with left-hemisphere lesions, 11 with right-hemisphere lesions, and 4 with bilateral lesions).
The structural integrity loss of the white-matter connection between the anterior temporal language region and the ventral visual cortex had a significant effect on the neural representation strength of object color knowledge in the ventral visual cortex and on object color knowledge behavior across modalities.
These contributions could not be explained by the potential effects of the early visual perception pathway or potential confounding brain or cognitive variables.
Our experiments reveal the contribution of the vision-language connection in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC) object knowledge neural representation and object knowledge behaviors, highlighting the significance of the language-sensory system interface.
