Imagine you're an fMRI researcher, and you have a participant in the fMRI scanner looking at the image above. First you see an increase in activity in the PPA, then the FFA, then the PPA again. What's the participant likely doing?

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

We’re asked to interpret an fMRI sequence where the participant shows a rise in activity in the PPA first, then the FFA, and then the PPA again. 
Option 1: 'Recognizing one of the people as looking familiar.' This option implies explicit memory recognition of a person, which would engage higher-order memory processes and is not specifically tied to initial PPA activation for scene processing or FFA for faces. It doesn’t align with the reported pattern of perceptual category processing (PPA for places, FFA for faces).
Option 2: 'Encoding, maintaining, and then retrieving the faces from memory.' This sequence would predict sustained or sequential engagement of face-related areas and memory circuits, but it would not explain the initial and repeated PPA activation followed by FFA as a progression through stimulus categories during perception.
Option 3: 'Attending to the peoples' faces, then the building in the background, and then the faces again.' Here, you would expect FFA engagement to precede PPA, not the observed PPA-then-FFA-then-PPA pattern, and the order contradicts the reported sequence where place-related processing (PPA) dominates first and again later.
Option 4: 'Attending to building in the background, then the faces, and then the building again.' This matches the known functional specialization: PPA preferentially processes places/scenes, FFA processes faces. The sequence of PPA (background building) → FFA (faces) → PPA (re-engagement with the scene/background) fits a task where the participant first attends to the background scene, then to the faces, and then returns to analyzing the scene, consistent with the reported activation pattern.
Option 5: 'Imagining themselves in a more exciting version of this photo.' This is a mental imagery statement not tied to perception of faces or scenes in the scanner and would not necessarily produce a clean PPA–FFA–PPA sequence tied to stimulus categories.
In summary, the pattern of PPA activation for scenes, followed by FFA activation for faces, followed by PPA again, is best explained by attending to the building in the background, then to the faces, and then back to the building, rather than the other suggested cognitive operations.

PSYCH 3513 SP2025 (28803) Midterm 2

Imagine you're an fMRI researcher, and you have a participant in the fMRI scanner looking at the image above. First you see an increase in activity in the PPA, then the FFA, then the PPA again. What's the participant likely doing?

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