A new scene-selective region in the superior parietal lobule and its potential involvement in visually-guided navigation

Growing evidence indicates that the occipital place area (OPA) – a scene-selective region in adult humans – is involved in “visually-guided navigation”. Here, we present evidence that there is a new scene-selective region located in the superior parietal lobule – henceforth called the “superior place area” (SPA) – that may also be involved in visually-guided navigation. First, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that SPA responds significantly more to scene stimuli than to face and object stimuli across two different sets of stimuli (i.e., “dynamic” and “static”) – establishing SPA as yet another scene-selective region. Second, we found that SPA, like OPA, responds significantly more to dynamic scene stimuli (i.e., video clips of first-person perspective motion through scenes, mimicking the actual visual experience of walking through a place) than to static scene stimuli (i.e., static images taken from the same video clips, rearranged such that first-person perspective motion could not be inferred) – suggesting that SPA, like OPA, is involved in visually-guided navigation. Such sensitivity to first-person perspective motion information through scenes cannot be explained by scene selectivity alone, domain-general motion sensitivity, or low-level visual information. And third, resting-state fMRI data revealed that SPA is preferentially connected to OPA, compared to other scene regions – again consistent with the hypothesis that the SPA, like OPA, is involved in visually-guided navigation. Taken together, these results demonstrate a new scene-selective region that may be involved in visually-guided navigation, and raise interesting questions about the precise role that SPA (compared to OPA) plays in visually-guided navigation.