Clutter does not affect the spatial tuning of category representations in human object-selective cortex

Natural vision is frequently impaired when the visual field is crowded with multiple competing objects. One common interpretation of this clutter interference is that large receptive fields in high-level visual cortex make it hard to separate objects from their surround. This view predicts less interference for spatially localized representations; therefore, classifiers trained under clutter might rely more on such localized representations. Here we tested this by measuring participants’ brain signals with fMRI while they viewed objects presented either alone or within cluttered arrays. Consistent with prior work, category decoding accuracy was significantly reduced in clutter. However, classifiers trained directly on cluttered displays were not spatially more localized. Instead, they generalized robustly across spatial positions, comparable to classifiers trained on isolated objects. This finding challenges the idea that clutter preferentially disrupts position-tolerant representations.