Abstract
Visual expertise-the ability to discriminate highly similar exemplars quickly and accurately within a category-supports skilled performance across real-world domains and is supported by distributed neural systems. We focus on non-face expertise to test cross-domain convergence in acquired real-world visual skills, treating faces separately because socially embedded, sensitive-period-constrained processing could blur this inference. It remains unresolved whether non-face expertise across heterogeneous domains converges on a shared, domain-general whole-brain architecture, or instead recruits domain-contingent neural configurations that vary with task and stimulus demands. We conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis of 22 task-fMRI studies spanning 11 real-world non-face expertise domains (579 participants, 210 peak-activation foci). Primary analysis revealed a robust, right-lateralized parieto-temporo-occipital circuit centered on the middle occipital gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, angular gyrus and adjoining inferior parietal lobule. We propose that this circuit constitutes a domain-general neural core that integrates fine-grained visual features with semantic associations while supporting attention-guided recognition of visually similar objects in expert performance. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses uncovered a complementary adaptive component, the engagement of which varied systematically with representational and contextual factors. Pictorial stimuli and expert-novice contrasts reliably strengthened recruitment of the right-hemisphere core, whereas symbolic stimuli engagement toward left temporal regions while selectively re-engaging right-core nodes. In addition, male-skewed samples showed attenuated left-hemisphere activation. Together, these findings delineate a stable right-hemisphere neural scaffold underlying non-face visual expertise, flexibly supplemented by left-hemisphere systems as a function of stimulus format, task demands, and demographic context, providing a whole-brain reference framework for future studies.
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W., C., Y., B., X., X., J., L., X., H., R., G. J., M., D. (2025). Whole-Brain Convergence of Real-World Visual Expertise beyond Faces: Meta-Analytic Evidence for Core-Adaptive Neural Architecture. arXiv preprint arXiv:10.64898/2025.12.29.696823.
Chai, W., Bai, Y., Xie, X., Liang, J., Huang, X., Georgiadis, J. R., and Dong, M.. "Whole-Brain Convergence of Real-World Visual Expertise beyond Faces: Meta-Analytic Evidence for Core-Adaptive Neural Architecture." arXiv preprint arXiv:10.64898/2025.12.29.696823 (2025).