Large-scale functional overlap between dorsal and ventral object-responsive networks

The processes of recognizing objects and acting upon or with them have traditionally been attributed to computations associated with ventral and dorsal visual pathways, respectively. Accumulating evidence indicates that specific regions of the two pathways interact but the extent and strength of the whole-brain network connectivity remain to be evaluated. Here, in two experiments, we characterized the whole-brain network connections of object-selective seeds in each pathway using multiple analytic approaches with functional MRI data acquired while participants viewed objects. The results revealed substantial spatial overlap in connectivity in the networks generated from a dorsal and a ventral seed — with greater similarity of these object networks within an individual than the similarity of each network separately across individuals. This overlap persisted for both tools and non-tools even after controlling for the shared variance between pathways. Notably, the dorsal pathway showed overall stronger and more widespread connectivity than the ventral pathway and was a stronger source of effective connectivity across the brain. Together, these findings reveal that dorsal and ventral pathways form highly overlapping and distributed networks in the service of object perception.