Some of the most impressive functional specializations in the human brain are found in the occipitotemporal cortex (OTC), where several areas exhibit selectivity for a small number of visual categories, such as faces and bodies, and spatially cluster based on stimulus animacy. Previous studies suggest this animacy organization reflects the representation of an intuitive taxonomic hierarchy, distinct from the presence of face- and body-selective areas in OTC. Using human functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the independent contribution of these two factors—the face-body division and taxonomic hierarchy—in accounting for the animacy organization of OTC and whether they might also be reflected in the architecture of several deep neural networks that have not been explicitly trained to differentiate taxonomic relations. We found that graded visual selectivity, based on animal resemblance to human faces and bodies, masquerades as an apparent animacy continuum, which suggests that taxonomy is not a separate factor underlying the organization of the ventral visual pathway.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Portions of the visual cortex are specialized to determine whether types of objects are animate in the sense of being capable of self-movement. Two factors have been proposed as accounting for this animacy organization: representations of faces and bodies and an intuitive taxonomic continuum of humans and animals. We performed an experiment to assess the independent contribution of both of these factors. We found that graded visual representations, based on animal resemblance to human faces and bodies, masquerade as an apparent animacy continuum, suggesting that taxonomy is not a separate factor underlying the organization of areas in the visual cortex.

人脑中一些最令人印象深刻的功能特化存在于枕颞叶皮层 (OTC)，其中几个区域对少数视觉类别（如面部和身体）表现出选择性，并根据刺激活力在空间上聚类。先前的研究表明，这种活力组织反映了直观的分类层次结构的表示，与 OTC 中面部和身体选择区域的存在不同。使用人体功能磁共振成像，我们研究了这两个因素——面体划分和分类层次——在解释 OTC 的活力组织方面的独立贡献，以及它们是否也可能反映在几个深度神经网络的架构中没有被明确训练来区分分类关系。

意义陈述视觉皮层的某些部分专门用于确定物体类型是否在能够自我运动的意义上是有生命的。已经提出了两个因素来解释这种有生命的组织：面部和身体的表示以及人类和动物的直观分类连续体。我们进行了一项实验来评估这两个因素的独立贡献。我们发现，基于动物与人脸和身体的相似性的分级视觉表征伪装成一个明显的动画连续体，这表明分类学并不是视觉皮层区域组织的一个单独因素。