Scientists drawing conclusions on perception

Drawing – even simple line creations – are being used to help scientists understand how we perceive things.

While these drawings “capture rich information,” the process behind them has not been well understood. A new research paper indicates that regions in the visual cortex – a slender part of the brain that allows vision – help recognize objects and allow humans to draw them.

The more times the object is drawn, the better information about it is shared elsewhere in the brain.

The study involved people repeatedly drawing two objects while they were being trained and, after training, viewing the objects as well as two others. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), their brain activity was measured by detecting changes associated with blood flow, which increases as an area of the brain is in use.

“We find that these regions carry diagnostic information about an object in a similar format both during recognition and production, and that practice drawing an object enhances transmission of information about it to downstream regions,” the authors of the paper wrote. “Taken together, our study provides novel insight into the functional relationship between visual production and recognition in the brain."

“Relating Visual Production and Recognition of Objects in Human Visual Cortex,” was published in the Journal of Neuroscience on Dec. 23. It was written by Judith E. Fan, Jeffrey D. Wammes, Jordan B. Gunn, Daniel L. K. Yamins, Kenneth A. Norman and Nicholas B. Turk-Browne.