difficult to distinguish between the two because the edge that would separate figure from ground is part of neither, equally defining both the figure and the background. The LOC (lateral occipital cortex) is highly important for figure–ground perception. This region of the visual cortex (located lateral to the fusiform gyrus and extending anteriorly and ventrally) has consistently shown stronger activation in response to objects versus non-objects." Evidently, the process of distinguishing figure from ground (sometimes called figure–ground segmentation) is inherently probabilistic, and the best that the brain can do is to take all relevant cues into account to generate a probabilistic best-guess. In this light, Bayesian figure–ground segmentation models have been proposed to simulate the probabilistic inference by which the brain may distinguish figure from ground. Subjective factors can also influence figure–ground perception. For instance, if a viewer has the intention to perceive one of the two regions as the figure, it will likely alter their ability to analyze the two regions objectively. In addition, if a viewer's gaze is fixated on a particular region, the viewer is more likely to view the fixated region as the figure. Although subjective factors can alter the probability of seeing the figure on one particular side of an edge, they tend not to overpower compositional cues. Artistic applications Figure–ground organization is used to help artists and designers in composition of a 2D piece. Figure–ground reversal may be used as an intentional visual design technique in which an existing image's foreground and background colors are purposely swapped to create new images. Non-visual Figure–ground perception can be expanded from visual perception to include non-visual concepts such as melody/harmony, subject/background and positive/negative space. The concept of figure and ground fully depends on the observer and not on the item itself. In the typical sonic scenarios people encounter, auditory figure and ground signals often overlap in time as well as in frequency content. In these situations, auditory objects are established by integrating sound components both over time and frequency. A 2011 study suggests that the auditory system possesses mechanisms that are sensitive to such cross-frequency and cross-time correlations. Results of this study demonstrated significant activations in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the superior temporal sulcus related to bottom-up, stimulus-driven figure–ground decomposition. In crowded rooms or parties, a person is able to zero in on the conversation they are having with one person (figure) while drowning out the