Anteromedial temporal cortex supports fine-grained differentiation among objects.

Patients with damage to left anteromedial temporal cortex often show a striking deficit: they fail to recognize animals and other living things. This failure of recognition presents an important challenge to theories of the neural representation of conceptual knowledge. Here we propose that this lesion-behaviour association arises because polymodal neurons in anteromedial temporal cortex integrate simple features into complex feature conjunctions, providing the neural infrastructure for differentiating among objects.