Humans and monkeys share visual representations

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 108; no. 18; pp. 7635 - 7640
• Main Authors: Fize, Denis, Cauchoix, Maxime, Fabre-Thorpe, Michèle
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 03.05.2011; National Acad Sciences
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Animals; Association Learning - physiology; Behavioral neuroscience; Biological Sciences; brain; Computer Simulation; convergent evolution; Discrimination (Psychology); Eyes & eyesight; False alarms; Female; Human subjects; Humans; Life Sciences; Macaca; Macaca mulatta - physiology; Male; Mental objects; Mental stimulation; Middle Aged; Monkeys; Monkeys & apes; Neurons; Neurons and Cognition; Neurosciences; Photic Stimulation; Prefrontal cortex; Primates; Studies; trees; Visual Perception - physiology; visual categorization; natural scenes; homology; non-human primate
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1016213108

Conceptual abilities in animals have been shown at several levels of abstraction, but it is unclear whether the analogy with humans results from convergent evolution or from shared brain mechanisms inherited from a common origin. Macaque monkeys can access "non-similarity-based concepts," such as when sorting pictures containing a superordinate target category (animal, tree, etc.) among other scenes. However, such performances could result from low-level visual processing based on learned regularities of the photographs, such as for scene categorization by artificial systems. By using pictures of man-made objects or animals embedded in man-made or natural contexts, the present study clearly establishes that macaque monkeys based their categorical decision on the presence of the animal targets regardless of the scene backgrounds. However, as is found with humans, monkeys performed better with categorically congruent object/context associations, especially when small object sizes favored background information. The accuracy improvements and the response-speed gains attributable to superordinate category congruency in monkeys were strikingly similar to those of human subjects tested with the same task and stimuli. These results suggest analogous processing of visual information during the activation of abstract representations in both humans and monkeys; they imply a large overlap between superordinate visual representations in humans and macaques as well as the implicit use of experienced associations between object and context.