Visual-Semantic Tuning across the Cortex Shifts between Tasks.
Overview
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720
- Department of Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720
Abstract
Attention is a powerful mechanism that dynamically optimizes brain representations to prioritize behaviorally relevant information. While previous studies focusing on single tasks have demonstrated that attention shifts tuning toward attended targets, real-world behavior often requires humans to switch between tasks with different demands. How does visual-semantic tuning in the human brain shift to support the behavioral demands of different naturalistic tasks? To investigate this question, we used voxelwise encoding models to explore how visual-semantic tuning across the human cerebral cortex shifts between two naturalistic human fMRI experiments that used distinct tasks, movie-watching (five male participants) and active navigation (six participants, three male, three female). Results show that visual-semantic tuning in the cortex differed substantially between experiments. Principal component analysis reveals that during navigation, tuning shifts increase the representation of vehicles and traffic signs compared with movie-watching and that these shifts are localized to distinct functional networks. These tuning shifts reconfigure the human brain’s representations of object categories based on their behavioral relevance. These findings suggest that visual-semantic tuning in the brain dynamically shifts toward task-relevant information across naturalistic tasks, optimizing functional representations to achieve diverse behavioral goals.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Code
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Supporting code will be made available on GitHub upon publication.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 2 authors, 4 keywords, 12 MeSH terms, 4 funders, 54 references.
Cite
This paper
Zhang, T., & Gallant, J. L. (2026). Visual-Semantic Tuning across the Cortex Shifts between Tasks. eNeuro, 13(9), ENEURO.0183-26.2026. https://
BibTeX
@article{zhang2026visual
author = {Zhang, Tianjiao and Gallant, Jack L.},
title = {{Visual-Semantic Tuning across the Cortex Shifts between Tasks}},
journal = {eNeuro},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
volume = {13},
number = {9},
pages = {ENEURO.0183--26.2026},
publisher = {Society for Neuroscience},
issn = {2373-2822},
doi = {10.1523/
url = {https://
pmid = {42642327},
pmcid = {PMC13583329}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Zhang, Tianjiao
AU - Gallant, Jack L.
TI - Visual-Semantic Tuning across the Cortex Shifts between Tasks
T2 - eNeuro
J2 - eNeuro
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 13
IS - 9
SP - ENEURO.0183
EP - 26.2026
SN - 2373-2822
PB - Society for Neuroscience
DO - 10.1523/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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"PMCID": "PMC13583329",
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"URL": "https://
"language": "en",
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