PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

MIT researchers show how the brain distinguishes 'things' from 'stuff'

A new study finds parts of the brain’s visual cortex are specialized to analyze either 'things' like solid objects or 'stuff,' flowing materials like water or sand

2025-07-31
(Press-News.org) CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Imagine a ball bouncing down a flight of stairs. Now think about a cascade of water flowing down those same stairs. The ball and the water behave very differently, and it turns out that your brain has different regions for processing visual information about each type of physical matter.

In a new study, MIT neuroscientists have identified parts of the brain’s visual cortex that respond preferentially when you look at “things” — that is, rigid or deformable objects like a bouncing ball. Other brain regions are more activated when looking at “stuff” — liquids or granular substances such as sand.

This distinction, which has never been seen in the brain before, may help the brain plan how to interact with different kinds of physical materials, the researchers say. 

“When you’re looking at some fluid or gooey stuff, you engage with it in different way than you do with a rigid object. With a rigid object, you might pick it up or grasp it, whereas with fluid or gooey stuff, you probably are going to have to use a tool to deal with it,” says Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience; a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines; and the senior author of the study.

MIT postdoc Vivian Paulun, who is joining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin at Madison this fall, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in the journal Current Biology. RT Pramod, an MIT postdoc, and Josh Tenenbaum, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences, are also authors of the study.

Stuff vs. things

Decades of brain imaging studies, including early work by Kanwisher, have revealed regions in the brain’s ventral visual pathway that are involved in recognizing the shapes of 3D objects, including an area called the lateral occipital complex (LOC). A region in the brain’s dorsal visual pathway, known as the frontoparietal physics network (FPN), analyzes the physical properties of materials, such as mass or stability.

Although scientists have learned a great deal about how these pathways respond to different features of objects, the vast majority of these studies have been done with solid objects, or “things.” 

“Nobody has asked how we perceive what we call ‘stuff’ — that is, liquids or sand, honey, water, all sorts of gooey things. And so we decided to study that,” Paulun says.

These gooey materials behave very differently from solids. They flow rather than bounce, and interacting with them usually requires containers and tools such as spoons. The researchers wondered if these physical features might require the brain to devote specialized regions to interpreting them.

To explore how the brain processes these materials, Paulun used a software program designed for visual effects artists to create more than 100 video clips showing different types of things or stuff interacting with the physical environment. In these videos, the materials could be seen sloshing or tumbling inside a transparent box, being dropped onto another object, or bouncing or flowing down a set of stairs. 

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the visual cortex of people as they watched the videos. They found that both the LOC and the FPN respond to “things” and “stuff,” but that each pathway has distinctive subregions that respond more strongly to one or the other.

“Both the ventral and the dorsal visual pathway seem to have this subdivision, with one part responding more strongly to ‘things,’ and the other responding more strongly to ‘stuff,’” Paulun says. “We haven’t seen this before because nobody has asked that before.”

Physical interactions

The findings suggest that the brain may have different ways of representing these two categories of material, similar to the artificial physics engines that are used to create video game graphics. These engines usually represent a 3D object as a mesh, while fluids are represented as sets of particles that can be rearranged. 

“The interesting hypothesis that we can draw from this is that maybe the brain, similar to artificial game engines, has separate computations for representing and simulating ‘stuff’ and ‘things.’ And that would be something to test in the future,” Paulun says.

The researchers also hypothesize that these regions may have developed to help the brain understand important distinctions that allow it to plan how to interact with the physical world. To further explore this possibility, the researchers plan to study whether the areas involved in processing rigid objects are also active when a brain circuit involved in planning to grasp objects is active. 

They also hope to look at whether any of the areas within the FPN correlate with the processing of more specific features of materials, such as the viscosity of liquids or the bounciness of objects. And in the LOC, they plan to study how the brain represents changes in the shape of fluids and deformable substances.

###

The research was funded by the German Research Foundation, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and a U.S. National Science Foundation grant to the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines. 

 

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Impact of the MISSION act on quality and outcomes of major cardiovascular procedures among veterans

2025-07-31
About The Study: The U.S. Congress enacted the Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks (MISSION) Act with the goal of improving veterans’ access to health care services. This study found that MISSION Act implementation was associated with substantial decreases in travel times among veterans who became geographically eligible for non-Veterans Affairs care. For these patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass grafting, MISSION Act implementation was also associated with worsened 30-day major adverse cardiovascular events ...

Not all low-grade prostate cancers are low risk

2025-07-31
A new study reveals that some men who are diagnosed with “Grade Group one” (GG1) prostate cancer may actually be at higher risk than biopsy results suggest, according to research led by Weill Cornell Medicine, University Hospitals Cleveland and Case Western University. The researchers conclude that relying on biopsy grade alone can lead to underestimating disease risk and misclassifying individuals who may benefit from definitive treatment with either surgery or radiation. Biopsies test only small areas of the prostate, so ...

GLP-1 RAs and risk of nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy in older patients with diabetes

2025-07-31
About The Study: This study of Medicare enrollees age 65 or older with type 2 diabetes found an association between semaglutide use and an increased risk of nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. There was risk variation among the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs); semaglutide and liraglutide were associated with higher risks.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kin Wah Fung, MD, email kfung@mail.nih.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2025.2299) Editor’s ...

The clinical practice guideline update on adult sinusitis emphasizes patient education, shared decision-making, and evidence-based treatment options

2025-07-31
ALEXANDRIA, VA —The American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) published the Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG): Adult Sinusitis Update today in Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. The purpose of this multidisciplinary guideline is to identify quality improvement opportunities in managing adult sinusitis and to provide explicit and actionable guidance that can be implemented across all clinical practices. "With sinusitis affecting about one in eight adults in the United States each year, this CPG update empowers both patients and their healthcare providers with ...

Big data begins to crack the cold case of endometriosis

2025-07-31
Big Data Begins to Crack the Cold Case of Endometriosis Records from millions of patients at UC health centers found correlations between endometriosis, one of the most common diseases in women, and a bounty of other diseases.  Scientists at UCSF have found that endometriosis — a painful chronic disease affecting 10% of women that often goes undiagnosed — often occurs alongside conditions like cancer, Crohn's disease, and migraine. The research could improve how endometriosis is diagnosed and, ultimately, how it is treated; and it paints the sharpest portrait yet of a condition that is ...

This artificial sweetener could make cancer treatment less effective

2025-07-31
Sucralose is a popular sugar substitute for people who are cutting calories or managing blood sugar levels, but new research by the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center suggests that the artificial sweetener may not be the best choice for patients undergoing cancer immunotherapy. Publishing today in Cancer Discovery, a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, the study found that patients with melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer who consumed high levels of sucralose had worse ...

Light-based listening: Researchers develop a low-cost visual microphone

2025-07-31
WASHINGTON — Researchers have created a microphone that listens with light instead of sound. Unlike traditional microphones, this visual microphone captures tiny vibrations on the surfaces of objects caused by sound waves and turns them into audible signals. “Our method simplifies and reduces the cost of using light to capture sound while also enabling applications in scenarios where traditional microphones are ineffective, such as conversing through a glass window,” said research team leader Xu-Ri Yao from Beijing ...

Immunoglobulin replacement therapy shows no reduction in serious infections for patients with CLL

2025-07-31
(WASHINGTON, July 31, 2025) — In patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), regular treatment with immunoglobulin replacement therapy was not associated with a reduced risk of serious infections requiring hospitalization, according to a study published in Blood Advances. “This is the first large, real-world study to follow patients with CLL who are regularly receiving immunoglobulin replacement,” said lead study author Sara Carrillo de Albornoz, health economist and a PhD candidate at Monash University in Australia. “Given its high cost and variable use in clinical ...

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus awarded one of the largest clinical trial grants in campus history to lead trauma study

2025-07-31
AURORA, Colo. (July 31, 2025) – The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus will lead a groundbreaking national clinical trial—supported by a $29 million grant from Octapharma—to evaluate whether early replacement of fibrinogen, a critical blood clotting mechanism in the body, can improve outcomes for trauma patients experiencing life-threatening bleeding. This investigator-initiated study is one of the largest clinical trial grants in campus history. The EFFECT Trial (Early ...

Weather-tracking advances are revealing astonishing extremes of lightning

2025-07-31
It was a single lightning flash that streaked across the Great Plains for 515 miles, from eastern Texas nearly all the way to Kansas City, setting a new world record. “We call it megaflash lightning and we're just now figuring out the mechanics of how and why it occurs,” said Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University President’s Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Cerveny and colleagues used space-based instruments to measure the megaflash, which took place during a major thunderstorm in October 2017. Its astonishing horizontal reach surpasses by 38 miles the previous record of 477 miles recorded during ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

High Mountain Asia’s shrinking glaciers linked to monsoon changes

All DRII-ed up: How do plants recover after drought?

Research on stigma says to just ‘shake it off’

Scientists track lightning “pollution” in real time using NASA satellite

Millions of women rely on contraceptives, but new Rice study shows they may do more than just prevent pregnancy

Hot days make for icy weather, Philippine study finds

Roxana Mehran, MD, receives the most prestigious award given by the European Society of Cardiology

World's first clinical trial showing lubiprostone aids kidney function

Capturing language change through the genes

Public trust in elections increases with clear facts

Thawing permafrost raised carbon dioxide levels after the last ice age

New DNA test reveals plants’ hidden climate role

Retinitis pigmentosa mouse models reflect pathobiology of human RP59

Cell’s ‘antenna’ could be key to curing diseases

Tiny ocean partnership between algae and bacteria reveals secrets of evolution

Scientists uncover cellular “toolkit” to reprogram immune cells for cancer therapy

Blocking protein control pathway slows rhabdomyosarcoma growth in mice

2026 Hertz Fellowship Application Now Open

The gut immune system is altered in mouse model of Alzheimer’s, providing a new target for therapeutics

ADHD drugs are being prescribed too quickly to preschoolers

UCLA scientists develop off-the-shelf immunotherapy for metastatic kidney cancer

Extreme heat linked to spike in domestic violence calls in New Orleans, study finds

Mount Sinai-Duke University study identifies DNA variants that increase testosterone production in PCOS patients

Physiology-guided complete revascularization in older patients with myocardial infarction

Metals and sulfate in air pollution mixture may contribute most to asthma hospitalizations

Understanding the profound yet hidden effects of neglect on white matter structures

SEOULTECH researchers develop revolutionary 3D-printed smart materials create high-performance pressure sensors for wearables

Pusan National University scientists develop self-deploying material for next-gen robotics

Remote screening for asymptomatic atrial fibrillation

Inflammation may explain why women with no standard modifiable risk factors have heart attacks and strokes

[Press-News.org] MIT researchers show how the brain distinguishes 'things' from 'stuff'
A new study finds parts of the brain’s visual cortex are specialized to analyze either 'things' like solid objects or 'stuff,' flowing materials like water or sand