had previously seen, participants were fully capable of remembering the image flashed. however, when the participants were then asked to draw what they had seen, they were unable to. when sperry et al. flashed images in the left visual field (lvf), the information processed would be sent to the right hemisphere (rh) of the brain. when asked to repeat what they had previously seen, participants were unable to recall the image flashed, but were very successful in drawing the image. therefore, sperry concluded that the left hemisphere of the brain was dedicated to language as the participants could clearly speak the image flashed. on the other hand, sperry concluded that the right hemisphere of the brain was involved in more creative activities such as drawing. parahippocampal place area located in the parahippocampal gyrus, the parahippocampal place area (ppa) was coined by nancy kanwisher and russell epstein after an fmri study showed that the ppa responds optimally to scenes presented containing a spatial layout, minimally to single objects and not at all to faces. it was also noted in this experiment that activity remains the same in the ppa when viewing a scene with an empty room or a room filled with meaningful objects. kanwisher and epstein proposed "that the ppa represents places by encoding the geometry of the local environment". in addition, soojin park and marvin chun posited that activation in the ppa is viewpoint specific, and so responds to changes in the angle of the scene. in contrast, another special mapping area, the retrosplenial cortex (rsc), is viewpoint invariant or does not change response levels when views change. this perhaps indicates a complementary arrangement of functionally and anatomically separate visual processing brain areas. extrastriate body area located in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex, fmri studies have shown the extrastriate body area (eba) to have selective responding when subjects see human bodies or body parts, implying that it has functional specialization. the eba does not optimally respond to objects or parts of objects but to human bodies and body parts, a hand for example. in fmri experiments conducted by downing et al. participants were asked to look at a series of pictures. these stimuli includes objects, parts of objects (for example just the head of a hammer), figures of the human body in all sorts of positions and types of detail (including line drawings or stick men), and body parts (hands or feet) without any body attached. there was significantly more blood flow (and thus activation) to human bodies, no matter how detailed, and body parts than to objects or object parts. distributive processing the cognitive theory of distributed processing suggests that brain areas are highly interconnected and process information in a distributed manner. a remarkable precedent of this orientation is the research of justo gonzalo on brain dynamics where several phenomena that he observed could not be explained by the traditional theory of localizations. from the gradation he observed between different syndromes in patients with different cortical lesions, this author proposed in 1952 a functional gradients model, which permits an ordering and an interpretation of multiple phenomena and syndromes. the functional gradients are continuous functions through the cortex describing a distributed specificity, so that, for a given sensory system, the specific gradient, of contralateral character, is maximum in the corresponding projection area and decreases in gradation towards more "central" zone and beyond so that the final decline reaches other primary areas. as a consequence of the crossing and overlapping of the specific gradients, in the central zone where the overlap is greater, there would be an action of mutual integration, rather nonspecific (or multisensory) with bilateral character due to the corpus callosum. this action would be maximum in the central zone and minimal towards the projection areas. as the author stated (p. 20 of the english translation) "a functional continuity with regional variation is then offered, each point of the cortex acquiring different properties but with certain unity with the rest of the cortex. it is a dynamic conception of quantitative localizations". a very similar gradients scheme was proposed by elkhonon goldberg in 1989 other researchers who provide evidence to support the theory of distributive processing include anthony mcintosh and william uttal, who question and debate localization and modality specialization within the brain. mcintosh's research suggests that human cognition involves interactions between the brain regions responsible for processes sensory information, such as vision, audition, and other mediating areas like the prefrontal cortex. mcintosh explains that modularity is mainly observed in sensory and motor systems, however, beyond these very receptors, modularity becomes "fuzzier" and you see the cross connections between systems increase. he also illustrates that there is an overlapping of functional characteristics between the sensory and motor systems, where these regions are close to one another. these different neural interactions influence each other, where activity changes in one area influence other connected areas. with this, mcintosh suggest that if you only focus on activity in one area, you may miss the changes in other integrative areas. neural interactions can be measured using analysis of covariance in neuroimaging. mcintosh used this analysis to convey a clear example of the interaction theory of distributive processing. in this study, subjects learned that an auditory stimulus signalled a visual event. mcintosh found activation (an increase blood flow), in an area of the occipital cortex, a region of the brain involved in visual processing, when the auditory stimulus was presented alone. correlations between the occipital cortex and different areas of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex and superior temporal cortex showed a pattern of co-variation and functional connectivity. uttal focusses on the limits of localizing cognitive processes in the brain. one of his main arguments is that since the late 1990s, research in cognitive neuroscience has forgotten about conventional psychophysical studies based on behavioural observation. he believes that current research focusses on the technological advances of brain imaging techniques such as mri and pet scans. thus, he further suggest that this research is dependent on the assumptions of localization and hypothetical cognitive modules that use such imaging techniques to pursuit these assumptions. uttal's major concern incorporates many controversies with the validly, over-assumptions and strong inferences some of these images are trying to illustrate. for instance, there is concern over the proper utilization of control images in an experiment. most of the cerebrum is active during cognitive activity, therefore the amount of increased activity in a region must be greater when compared to a controlled area. in general, this may produce false or exaggerated findings and may increase potential tendency to ignore regions of diminished activity which may be crucial to the particular cognitive process being studied. moreover, uttal believes that localization researchers tend to ignore the complexity of the nervous system. many regions in the brain are physically interconnected in a nonlinear system, hence, uttal believes that behaviour is produced by a variety of system organizations. collaboration the two theories, modularity and distributive processing, can also be combined. by operating simultaneously, these principles may interact with each other in a collaborative effort to characterize the functioning of the brain. fodor himself, one of the major contributors to the modularity theory, appears to have this sentiment. he noted that modularity is a matter of degrees, and that the brain is modular to the extent that it warrants studying it in regards to its functional specialization. although there are areas in the brain that are more specialized for cognitive processes than others, the nervous system also integrates and connects the information produced in these regions. in fact, the proposed distributive scheme of the functional cortical gradientes by j. gonzalo already tries to join both concepts modular and distributive: regional heterogeneity should be a definitive acquisition (maximum specificity in the projection paths and primary areas), but the rigid separation between projection and association areas would be erased through the continuous functions of gradient. the collaboration between the two theories not only would provide a more unified perception and understanding of the world but also make available the ability to learn from it.