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Scene categorization draws on 2 information sources: The identities of objects scenes contain and scenes' intrinsic spatial properties. Because these resources are formally independent, it is possible for them to leads to conflicting judgments of scene category. We tested the hypothesis that the potential for such conflicts is mitigated by a system of "crosstalk" between object- and spatial layout-processing pathways, under which the encoded spatial properties of scenes are biased by scenes' object contents. Specifically, we show that the presence of objects strongly associated with a given scene category can bias the encoded spatial properties of scenes containing them toward the average of that category, an effect which is evident both in behavioral measures of scenes' perceived spatial properties and in scene-evoked multivoxel patterns recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging from the parahippocampal place area (PPA), a region associated with the processing of scenes' spatial properties. These results indicate that harmonization of object- and spatial property-based estimates of scene identity begins when spatial properties are encoded, and that the PPA plays a central role in this process., (© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Scene recognition is a core function of the visual system, drawing both on scenes' intrinsic global features, prominently their spatial properties, and on the identities of the objects scenes contain. Neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies have associated spatial property-based scene categorization with parahippocampal cortex, while processing of scene-relevant object information is associated with the lateral occipital complex (LOC), wherein activity patterns distinguish between categories of standalone objects and those embedded in scenes. However, despite the importance of objects to scene categorization and the role of LOC in processing them, damage or disruption to LOC that hampers object recognition has been shown to improve scene categorization. To address this paradox, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to directly assess the contributions of LOC and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) to category judgments of indoor scenes that were devoid of objective identity signals. Observers were alternately cued to base judgments on scenes' objects or spatial properties. In both LOC and PPA, multivoxel activity patterns better decoded judgments based on their typically associated features: LOC more accurately decoded object-based judgments, while PPA more accurately decoded spatial property-based judgments. The cue contingency of LOC decoding accuracy indicates that it was not an outcome of feedback from judgments and is instead consistent with dependency of judgments on the output of object processing pathways in which LOC participates., (© 2014 ARVO.)