Pulvinar Response Profiles and Connectivity Patterns to Object Domains.

Distributed cortical regions show differential responses to visual objects belonging to different domains varying by animacy (e.g., animals vs tools), yet it remains unclear whether this is an organization principle also applying to the subcortical structures. Combining multiple fMRI activation experiments (two main experiments and six validation datasets; 12 females and 9 males in the main Experiment 1; 10 females and 10 males in the main Experiment 2), resting-state functional connectivity, and task-based dynamic causal modeling analysis in human subjects, we found that visual processing of images of animals and tools elicited different patterns of response in the pulvinar, with robust left lateralization for tools, and distinct, bilateral (with rightward tendency) clusters for animals. Such domain-preferring activity distribution in the pulvinar was associated with the magnitude with which the voxels were intrinsically connected with the corresponding domain-preferring regions in the cortex. The pulvinar-to-right-amygdala path showed a one-way shortcut supporting the perception of animals, and the modulation connection from pulvinar to parietal showed an advantage to the perception of tools. These results incorporate the subcortical regions into the object processing network and highlight that domain organization appears to be an overarching principle across various processing stages in the brain.