RESEARCH ARTICLE
Cortical Brain Regions Associated with Color Processing: An FMRi Study
Inês Bramão1, 3, 4, Luís Faísca1, Christian Forkstam2, 3, 4, Alexandra Reis1, 2, Karl Magnus Petersson*, 1, 2, 3, 4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 164
Last Page: 173
Publisher ID: TONIJ-4-164
DOI: 10.2174/1874440001004010164
PMID: 21270939
PMCID: PMC3026336
Article History:
Received Date: 24/2/2010Revision Received Date: 2/4/2010
Acceptance Date: 7/5/2010
Electronic publication date: 5/11/2010
Collection year: 2010

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
To clarify whether the neural pathways concerning color processing are the same for natural objects, for artifacts objects and for non-objects we examined brain responses measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) during a covert naming task including the factors color (color vs. black&white (B&W)) and stimulus type (natural vs. artifacts vs. non-objects). Our results indicate that the superior parietal lobule and precuneus (BA 7) bilaterally, the right hippocampus and the right fusifom gyrus (V4) make part of a network responsible for color processing both for natural objects and artifacts, but not for non-objects. When color objects (both natural and artifacts) were contrasted with color non-objects we observed activations in the right parahippocampal gyrus (BA 35/36), the superior parietal lobule (BA 7) bilaterally, the left inferior middle temporal region (BA 20/21) and the inferior and superior frontal regions (BA 10/11/47). These additional activations suggest that colored objects recruit brain regions that are related to visual semantic information/retrieval and brain regions related to visuo-spatial processing. Overall, the results suggest that color information is an attribute that can improve object recognition (behavioral results) and activate a specific neural network related to visual semantic information that is more extensive than for B&W objects during object recognition.