Processing of visual and non-visual naturalistic spatial information in the "parahippocampal place area".

The "parahippocampal place area" (PPA) in the human ventral visual stream exhibits increased hemodynamic activity correlated with the perception of landscape photos compared to faces or objects. Here, we investigate the perception of scene-related, spatial information embedded in two naturalistic stimuli. The same 14 participants were watching a Hollywood movie and listening to its audio-description as part of the open-data resource studyforrest.org. We model hemodynamic activity based on annotations of selected stimulus features, and compare results to a block-design visual localizer. On a group level, increased activation correlating with visual spatial information occurring in the movie is overlapping with a traditionally localized PPA. Activation correlating with semantic spatial information occurring in the audio-description is more restricted to the anterior PPA. On an individual level, we find significant bilateral activity in the PPA of nine individuals and unilateral activity in one individual. Results suggest that activation in the PPA generalizes to spatial information embedded in a movie and an auditory narrative, and may call for considering a functional subdivision of the PPA.

A studyforrest extension, an annotation of spoken language in the German dubbed movie "Forrest Gump" and its audio-description.

Here we present an annotation of speech in the audio-visual movie "Forrest Gump" and its audio-description for a visually impaired audience, as an addition to a large public functional brain imaging dataset ( studyforrest.org). The annotation provides information about the exact timing of each of the more than 2500 spoken sentences, 16,000 words (including 202 non-speech vocalizations), 66,000 phonemes, and their corresponding speaker. Additionally, for every word, we provide lemmatization, a simple part-of-speech-tagging (15 grammatical categories), a detailed part-of-speech tagging (43 grammatical categories), syntactic dependencies, and a semantic analysis based on word embedding which represents each word in a 300-dimensional semantic space. To validate the dataset's quality, we build a model of hemodynamic brain activity based on information drawn from the annotation. Results suggest that the annotation's content and quality enable independent researchers to create models of brain activity correlating with a variety of linguistic aspects under conditions of near-real-life complexity.

A studyforrest extension, retinotopic mapping and localization of higher visual areas.

The studyforrest (http://studyforrest.org) dataset is likely the largest neuroimaging dataset on natural language and story processing publicly available today. In this article, along with a companion publication, we present an update of this dataset that extends its scope to vision and multi-sensory research. 15 participants of the original cohort volunteered for a series of additional studies: a clinical examination of visual function, a standard retinotopic mapping procedure, and a localization of higher visual areas-such as the fusiform face area. The combination of this update, the previous data releases for the dataset, and the companion publication, which includes neuroimaging and eye tracking data from natural stimulation with a motion picture, form an extremely versatile and comprehensive resource for brain imaging research-with almost six hours of functional neuroimaging data across five different stimulation paradigms for each participant. Furthermore, we describe employed paradigms and present results that document the quality of the data for the purpose of characterising major properties of participants' visual processing stream.

An annotation of cuts, depicted locations, and temporal progression in the motion picture "Forrest Gump".

Here we present an annotation of locations and temporal progression depicted in the movie "Forrest Gump", as an addition to a large public functional brain imaging dataset ( http://studyforrest.org). The annotation provides information about the exact timing of each of the 870 shots, and the depicted location after every cut with a high, medium, and low level of abstraction. Additionally, four classes are used to distinguish the differences of the depicted time between shots. Each shot is also annotated regarding the type of location (interior/exterior) and time of day. This annotation enables further studies of visual perception, memory of locations, and the perception of time under conditions of real-life complexity using the studyforrest dataset.