Dissociable neural responses to hands and non-hand body

50 Accumulating evidence points to a map of visual regions encoding specific categories of 51 objects. For example, a region in the human extrastriate visual cortex, the extrastriate body 52 area (EBA), has been implicated in the visual processing of bodies and body parts. While in 53 the monkey, neurons selective for hands have been reported, in humans it is unclear whether 54 areas selective for individual body parts such as the hand exist. Here, we conducted two 55 fMRI experiments to test for hand-preferring responses in the human extrastriate visual 56 cortex. We found evidence for a hand-preferring region in left lateral occipito-temporal 57 cortex in all 14 participants. This region, located in the lateral occipital sulcus (LOS), 58 partially overlapped with left EBA, but could be functionally and anatomically dissociated 59 from it. In Experiment 2, we further investigated the functional profile of handand body60 preferring regions by measuring responses to hands, fingers, feet, assorted body parts (arms, 61 legs, torsos), and non-biological hand-like stimuli such as robotic hands. The hand-preferring 62 region responded most strongly to hands, followed by robotic hands, fingers, and feet, while 63 its response to assorted body parts did not significantly differ from baseline. By contrast, 64 EBA responded most strongly to body parts, followed by hands and feet, and did not 65 significantly respond to robotic hands or fingers. Together, these results provide evidence for 66 a representation of the hand in extrastriate visual cortex that is distinct from the 67 representation of other body parts. 68