The spatial frequency representation predicts category coding in the inferior temporal cortex

Understanding the neural representation of spatial frequency (SF) in the primate cortex is vital for unraveling visual processing in object recognition. While many studies focus on SF in the primary visual cortex, the characteristics and interaction of SF with category representation remain unclear. To explore SF representation in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex of macaques, we conducted extracellular recordings with complex stimuli systematically filtered by SF. Our findings reveal explicit SF coding at both single-neuron and population levels. Temporal dynamics analysis of SF representation reveals that low SF (LSF) is decoded faster than high SF (HSF), and the SF preference dynamically shifts from LSF to HSF over time. Additionally, the SF representation for each neuron forms a profile that predicts category selectivity at the population level. IT neurons cluster into four groups based on SF preference, each with distinct category coding behaviors. Notably, HSF-preferring neurons show the highest category decoding for faces. Despite the existing connection between SF and category coding, we have identified uncorrelated representations of SF and category. Unlike category coding, SF is more sparsely represented and depends more on individual neurons. These findings dissociate SF and category representations, underscoring SF’s pivotal role in object recognition.