inferotemporal

Inferotemporal refers to the inferior portion of the temporal lobe and, in neuroscience, to the inferotemporal cortex (IT), a major part of the ventral visual pathway involved in object recognition. In humans IT largely corresponds to portions of the inferior temporal gyrus and nearby ventral temporal cortex; in nonhuman primates IT includes areas such as TE, TEO, and adjacent cortex. IT is connected within the ventral stream, receiving input from earlier visual areas via intermediate regions such as V4 and ventral stream pathways, and projecting to higher-level association areas in the temporal and prefrontal cortex.

Anatomically, IT is organized to support the processing of complex visual features. Posterior IT tends to encode increasingly complex shapes and object parts, while anterior IT is implicated in more invariant, category-level representations. The region contains neurons that respond selectively to particular objects, and a subset shows strong tuning to categories such as faces, landmarks, or familiar objects. IT neurons typically exhibit tolerance to changes in position, scale, or lighting, enabling stable object recognition across viewing conditions.

Functionally, inferotemporal cortex is central to recognizing a wide range of visual categories, including faces and objects, and to forming durable perceptual representations. In humans, functional imaging has highlighted category-specific patches within IT, including face-selective regions, though object- and scene-selective responses are distributed as well. Clinically, damage to IT can result in visual agnosias, such as impaired object or face recognition, even when basic vision is preserved.

The term inferotemporal can refer broadly to the inferior temporal lobe region or more specifically to the inferotemporal cortex that underpins high-level visual recognition.