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Abstract
Distinct regions within the ventral visual pathway show neural specialization for
nonliving and living stimuli (e.g., tools, houses versus animals, faces). The causes
of these category preferences are widely debated. Using functional magnetic resonance
imaging, we find that the same regions of the ventral stream that show category preferences
for nonliving stimuli and animals in sighted adults show the same category preferences
in adults who are blind since birth. Both blind and sighted participants had larger
blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) responses in the medial fusiform gyrus for nonliving
stimuli compared to animal stimuli and differential BOLD responses in lateral occipital
cortex for animal stimuli compared to nonliving stimuli. These findings demonstrate
that the medial-to-lateral bias by conceptual domain in the ventral visual pathway
does not require visual experience in order to develop and suggest the operation of
innately determined domain-specific constraints on the organization of object knowledge.