In the orientation task, the right index finger and middle finger corresponded to counter-clockwise and clockwise responses, respectively.
For the orientation task, the participants judged whether the orientation of S2 was rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise compared to S1.
We identified 12 clusters in the duration task (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 1) and 11 clusters in the orientation task (Fig. 2b and Supplementary Table 2).
In the orientation task, participants had to judge whether the second cued grating was rotated clockwise or anti-clockwise with respect to the first cued grating (Fig. 1A).
The two gratings also differed in spatial phase and spatial frequency (see 'Stimuli'), to prevent participants from using motion cues in performing the orientation task.
In the orientation task, ignored fearful faces led to stronger activation in the right amygdala than ignored neutral faces.
In the orientation task (i.e., in the functional localizer scans), the orientation for S2 was a 10-degree rotation, in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, of the S1 orientation.
The ROIs determined by the duration task were used to decode duration information and the ROIs determined by the orientation task were used for decoding orientation information in the main scans.
Accuracy was significantly higher for the orientation task than for the contrast task (F1,22 = 4.94, p = 0.037), but there was no difference in reaction time between the tasks (mean RT = 702 ms vs. 711 ms, F1,22 = 0.30, p = 0.59).
Importantly, the orientation task is presented here as a potentially helpful new tool for assessing visual aesthetics and preference for product packaging.
