Temporal order–dependent and –independent cortical representation of gaze sequences

Brain activation patterns in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC) correspond not only to faces or scenes but also to the eye gaze sequences made while viewing these stimuli. But does the VOTC represent category-specific fixation sequences or rather category-specific spatial fixation patterns? To investigate this, we acquired eye movement and functional magnetic resonance imaging data from participants while they tracked dot sequences corresponding to fixations recorded during face or house viewing in the absence of the images themselves. To test for gaze sequences representation, the presented dots were either in the correct order or shuffled. Multivariate pattern analyses showed that activity in the parietal cortex was dependent on order information in the gaze sequences, while the VOTC and lateral occipital regions represented spatial fixation patterns but were not dependent on order. Our findings about cortical gaze sequence representation align with the existing understanding of visual processing, where the parietal cortex is involved in visuomotor control and the VOTC in object categorization. We argue that representation of category-specific fixation patterns in VOTC may support visual object categorization.