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Object representations and visual expertise: Putting the modules back into the map

The functional organization of visual object representations in the human brain has been a topic of controversy, as has been the role of expertise for shaping these representations. A most contentious matter has been the degree to which object representations and learning influences are distributed or modular. Based upon evidence from pattern classification fMRI I will argue that the truth is in the middle, more specifically, that apparent modules can only be understood by considering how they fit in a larger-scale distributed map. Neural changes to these partially distributed representations as a consequence of learning and expertise are also partially distributed and are guided by the informativeness of neurons/voxels/regions for what is learned.