Functional MRI mapping of dynamic visual features during natural viewing in the macaque

The ventral visual pathway of the primate brain is specialized to respond to stimuli in certain categories, such as the well-studied face selective patches in the macaque inferotemporal cortex. To what extent does response selectivity determined using brief presentations of isolated stimuli predict activity during the free viewing of a natural, dynamic scene, where features are superimposed in space and time? To approach this question, we obtained fMRI activity from the brains of three macaques viewing extended video clips containing a range of social and nonsocial content and compared the fMRI time courses to a family of feature models derived from the movie content. Starting with more than two dozen feature models extracted from each movie, we created functional maps based on features whose time courses were nearly orthogonal, focusing primarily on faces, motion content, and contrast level. Activity mapping using the face feature model readily yielded functional regions closely resembling face patches obtained using a block design in the same animals. Overall, the motion feature model dominated responses in nearly all visually driven areas, including the face patches as well as ventral visual areas V4, TEO, and TE. Control experiments presenting dynamic movies, whose content was free of animals, demonstrated that biological movement critically contributed to the predominance of motion in fMRI responses. These results highlight the value of natural viewing paradigms for studying the brain's functional organization and also underscore the paramount contribution of magnocellular input to the ventral visual pathway during natural vision. •We used a natural viewing paradigm to generate fMRI feature maps.•We were able to map face patches with as little as 15min of natural viewing.•Motion dominated fMRI responses throughout the ventral visual pathway.•Motion contributed much less to fMRI responses to videos without social content.