Fine-grained neural coding of bodies and body parts in human visual cortex

Body perception plays a fundamental role in social cognition. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying this process in humans remain elusive given the spatiotemporal constraints of functional imaging. Here we present for the first time intracortical recordings of single- and multi-unit spiking activity in two epilepsy surgery patients in or near the extrastriate body area (EBA), a critical region for body perception. Our recordings revealed a strong preference for human bodies over a large range of control stimuli. Notably, body selectivity was driven by a distinct selectivity for body parts. The observed body selectivity generalized to non-photographic depictions of bodies including silhouettes and stick figures. Overall, our study provides unique neural data that bridge the gap between human neuroimaging and macaque electrophysiology studies, laying a solid foundation for computational models of human body processing.

Methods
All data were collected using 96-channel utah arrays implanted in human visual cortex, and recorded with a Neuroport system (Blackrock Neurotech).