The human medial temporal lobe (MTL) plays a crucial role in recognizing visual objects, a key cognitive function that relies on the formation of semantic representations. Nonetheless, it remains unknown how visual information of general objects is translated into semantic representations in the MTL. Furthermore, the debate about whether the human MTL is involved in perception has endured for a long time. To address these questions, we investigated three distinct models of neural object coding—semantic coding, axis-based feature coding, and region-based feature coding—in each subregion of the human MTL, using high-resolution fMRI in two male and six female participants. Our findings revealed the presence of semantic coding throughout the MTL, with a higher prevalence observed in the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and perirhinal cortex (PRC), while axis coding and region coding were primarily observed in the earlier regions of the MTL. Moreover, we demonstrated that voxels exhibiting axis coding supported the transition to region coding and contained information relevant to semantic coding. Together, by providing a detailed characterization of neural object coding schemes and offering a comprehensive summary of visual coding information for each MTL subregion, our results not only emphasize a clear role of the MTL in perceptual processing but also shed light on the translation of perception-driven representations of visual features into memory-driven representations of semantics along the MTL processing pathway.

人类内侧颞叶（MTL）在识别视觉对象方面发挥着至关重要的作用，这是一种依赖于语义表征形成的关键认知功能。尽管如此，一般物体的视觉信息如何转化为 MTL 中的语义表示仍然未知。此外，关于人类 MTL 是否参与感知的争论已经持续了很长时间。为了解决这些问题，我们在人类 MTL 的每个子区域中研究了三种不同的神经对象编码模型——语义编码、基于轴的特征编码和基于区域的特征编码，在两名男性和六名女性中使用高分辨率功能磁共振成像参与者。我们的研究结果揭示了整个 MTL 中存在语义编码，在海马旁皮层 (PHC) 和鼻周皮层 (PRC) 中观察到的患病率较高，而轴编码和区域编码主要在 MTL 的早期区域观察到。此外，我们证明了表现出轴编码的体素支持向区域编码的过渡，并包含与语义编码相关的信息。总之，通过提供神经对象编码方案的详细特征，并提供每个 MTL 子区域的视觉编码信息的全面总结，我们的结果不仅强调了 MTL 在感知处理中的明确作用，而且还揭示了感知的翻译 -沿 MTL 处理路径将视觉特征驱动的表示转化为记忆驱动的语义表示。