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Poster Session A: Tuesday, August 12, 1:30 – 4:30 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

The human superior colliculus encodes looming- and object-related visual threat

Monica Thieu¹, Philip A Kragel¹; ¹Emory University

Presenter: Monica Thieu

The superior colliculus is an evolutionarily old midbrain structure involved in vision, attention, and motor control, enabling it to rapidly coordinate defensive responses to approaching threats. It remains unclear whether the human superior colliculus functions as a rudimentary threat detector, or if it uses highly processed information from cortex to facilitate threat processing. Here, we used convolutional neural networks and fMRI to characterize superior colliculus responses to naturalistic videos. We found that the human superior colliculus encoded visual looming and static object features, both of which were related to subjective fear ratings. Connectivity analyses revealed that looming and object-related signals in the superior colliculus covaried with a common network of regions including frontoparietal cortex, pulvinar, amygdala, and early visual, superior, and inferotemporal cortex. Object-related signals in the superior colliculus covaried more strongly with activity in the fusiform gyrus than looming-related signals, suggesting that static information about objects may reach the colliculus through cortical inputs. Together, these results characterize how the superior colliculus flexibly detects threats through its participation in distributed neural networks.

Topic Area: Object Recognition & Visual Attention

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF