Functional characterization of correct and incorrect feature integration

Advance access publication date 30 April 2022Our sensory system constantly receives information from the environment and our own body. Despite our impression to the contrary, we remain largely unaware of this information and often cannot report it correctly. Although perceptual processing does not require conscious effort on the part of the observer, it is often complex, giving rise to errors such as incorrect integration of features (illusory conjunctions). In the present study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the neural bases of feature integration in a dual task that produced ~30% illusions. A distributed set of regions demonstrated increased activity for correct compared to incorrect (illusory) feature integration, with increased functional coupling between occipital and parietal regions. In contrast, incorrect feature integration (illusions) was associated with increased occipital (V1–V2) responses at early stages, reduced functional connectivity between right occipital regions and the frontal eye field at later stages, and an overall decrease in coactivation between occipital and parietal regions. These results underscore the role of parietal regions in feature integration and highlight the relevance of functional occipito-frontal interactions in perceptual processing.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation research projects PSI2017-88136 and PID2020-119033GB-I00 and the local government of Andalusia (Proyectos de I+D+i en el marco del Programa Operativo FEDER, B-SEJ-570-UGR20) to Ana B. Chica. Pedro M. Paz- Alonso was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [RYC-2014- 15440 and PGC2018-093408-B-I00], Neuroscience projects from the Fundación Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, Basque Government [PIBA-2021-1-0003], and a grant from “la Caixa” Banking Foundation under the project code LCF/PR/HR19/52160002. BCBL acknowledges support by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2025 program and by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation CEX2020-001010-S