The transition in the ventral stream from feature to real-world entity representations

This brief thought-provoking perspective paper complements the review devoted to the extrastriate neuronal properties published in Physiological reviews(Orban,2008). At that time (Orban,2008; Nassi and Callaway,2009) the properties of infero-temporalneurons were not well understood,preventing a coherent picture of the function of monkey TE and its equivalent regions in man to be drawn. The present perspective paper attempts to correct this shortcoming. Since fMRI became available(Dubowitzetal., 1998; Logothetis etal.,1998; Stefanacci et al.,1998;Vanduffel etal., 1998) for systematic investigation in the alert monkey(Vanduffel et al.,2001), considerable progress has been made,through fMRI- guided monkey single-cellstudies,and by parallel comparative imaging in humans and monkeys.Inaddition,the connections of TE cortex have recently been reassessed(Saleem etal.,2007, 2008; Ungerleider et al.,2008; Gerbellaetal.,2010; Kravitzetal.,2013), allowing a tight comparison between anatomical connectivity and functionality.status: publishe