Mysteries Of The Extrastriate Body Area
We briefly touched on the topic of the Fusiform Face Area (FFA), the Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA) and the Extrastriate Body Area (EBA). We were introduced to the effect of damage to the FFA, which results in prosopagnosia, an impairment in the ability to recognize faces, but she didn’t really talk about damage to the other areas. This led me to wonder what people with damage to the EBA would feel like and how their perception of the world would differ. Majority of my dreams involve people and recently, I noticed that I have even seen myself falling in my dreams. How different would my dreams have been if my EBA was damaged?
EBA is an area in the occipital lobe that will respond strongly to the implication of a non-face body part, as defined in both the slides and the textbook. The first study to provide evidence for this region of the brain was done by Downing et al. (2001), when they wanted to add to the modular recognition system, where object classes are handled by distinct processing “modules” rather than the same neural mechanisms. At first, I was unsure whether the term body included humans specifically, or was general, which would also include other animals. I was uncertain because neither the books nor the slides specified what it was, although it might be implied from the pictures that it was solely responsible for human bodies. Later, when I read the original article, I learnt that the activation of EBA was highest in response to implications of the human body, and intermediate in terms of face parts and mammals when brain activity was tracked by fMRI. What I also found surprising was that the response to whole human faces was significantly low compared to face parts. So, the definition must be modified to read “human body” instead of just “body.”
From this, a couple of interesting questions arise, obviously concerning the main idea: “What happens when it is damaged?” The first question I have is whether damage to my extrastriate area could account
EBA is an area in the occipital lobe that will respond strongly to the implication of a non-face body part, as defined in both the slides and the textbook. The first study to provide evidence for this region of the brain was done by Downing et al. (2001), when they wanted to add to the modular recognition system, where object classes are handled by distinct processing “modules” rather than the same neural mechanisms. At first, I was unsure whether the term body included humans specifically, or was general, which would also include other animals. I was uncertain because neither the books nor the slides specified what it was, although it might be implied from the pictures that it was solely responsible for human bodies. Later, when I read the original article, I learnt that the activation of EBA was highest in response to implications of the human body, and intermediate in terms of face parts and mammals when brain activity was tracked by fMRI. What I also found surprising was that the response to whole human faces was significantly low compared to face parts. So, the definition must be modified to read “human body” instead of just “body.”
From this, a couple of interesting questions arise, obviously concerning the main idea: “What happens when it is damaged?” The first question I have is whether damage to my extrastriate area could account
References: Downing, P.E., Jiang, Y., Shuman, M., and Kanwisher, N. (2001). A Cortical Area Selective for Visual Processing of the Human Body. Science 293, 2470-2473. Heydrich, L., and Blanke, O. (2013). Distinct Illusory own-body Perceptions Caused by Damage to Posterior Insula and Extrastriate Cortex. Brain 136 (3), 790-803. Urgesi, C., Berlucchi, G., and Aglioti, S.M. (2004). Magnetic Stimulation of Extrastriate Body Area Impairs Visual Processing of Nonfacial Body Parts. Current Biology 14, 2130-2134.