Summary

Interest in the neural representations of scenes centered first on the idea that the primate visual system evolved in the context of natural scene statistics, but with the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging, interest turned to scenes as a category of visual representation distinct from that of objects, faces, or bodies. Research comparing such categories revealed a scene network comprised of the parahippocampal place area, the medial place area, and the occipital place area. The network has been linked to a variety of functions, including navigation, categorization, and contextual processing. Moreover, much is known about both the visual representations of scenes within the network as well as its role in and connections to the brain’s semantic system. To fully understand the scene network, however, more work is needed to both break it down into its constituent parts and integrate what is known into a coherent system or systems.