Neuron Article Beyond the Edges of a View: Boundary Extension in Human Scene-Selective Visual Cortex

To allow perception of a continuous world, cor-tical mechanisms extrapolate missing informa-tion with highly constrained predictions about the environment just beyond the edges of a view. Here, we report functional magnetic res-onance imaging evidence for extrapolation of scene layout information beyond what was physically presented, an illusion known as boundary extension. Consistent with behavioral reports, we observed boundary extension for scene-selective attenuation in the parahippo-campal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial cor-tex (RSC), but no such extrapolation of object representations in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). These results demonstrate that scene layout representations are extrapolated beyond the confines of the perceptual input. Such ex-trapolationmay facilitate perception of a contin-uous world from discontinuous views