Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found an area in the fusiform gyrus in 12 of the 15 subjects tested that was significantly more active when the subjects viewed faces than when they viewed assorted common objects. This face activation was used to define a specific region of interest individually for each subject, within which several new tests of face specificity were run. In each of five subjects tested, the predefined candidate "face area" also responded significantly more strongly to passive viewing of (1) intact than scrambled two-tone faces, (2) full front-view face photos than front-view photos of houses, and (in a different set of five subjects) (3) three-quarter-view face photos (with hair concealed) than photos of human hands; it also responded more strongly during (4) a consecutive matching task performed on three-quarter-view faces versus hands. Our technique of running multiple tests applied to the same region defined functionally within individual subjects provides a solution to two common problems in functional imaging: (1) the requirement to correct for multiple statistical comparisons and (2) the inevitable ambiguity in the interpretation of any study in which only two or three conditions are compared. Our data allow us to reject alternative accounts of the function of the fusiform face area (area "FF") that appeal to visual attention, subordinate-level classification, or general processing of any animate or human forms, demonstrating that this region is selectively involved in the perception of faces.

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When 2 targets are presented among distractors in rapid serial visual presentation, correct identification of the 1st target results in a deficit for a 2nd target appearing within 200-500 ms. This attentional blink (AB; J. E. Raymond, K. L. Shapiro, & K. M. Arnell, 1992) was examined for categorically defined targets (letters among nonletters) in 7 experiments. AB was obtained for the 2nd letter target among digit distractors (Experiment 1) and also for a 3rd target (Experiment 2). Results of Experiments 3-5 confirmed that AB is triggered by local interference from immediate posttarget stimulation (Raymond et al., 1992) and showed that AB is modulated by the discriminability between the 1st target and the immediately following distractor. Experiments 5-7 further examined the effects of both local interference and global discriminability. A 2-stage model is proposed to account for the AB results.

The authors examined the organization of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Using a change-detection task, they reported that VSTM stores relational information between individual items. This relational processing is mediated by the organization of items into spatial configurations. The spatial configuration of visual objects is important for VSTM of spatial locations, colors, and shapes. When color VSTM is compared with location VSTM, spatial configuration plays an integral role because configuration is important for color VSTM, whereas color is not important for location VSTM. The authors also examined the role of attention and found that the formation of configuration is modulated by both top-down and boltom-up attentional factors. In summary, the authors proposed that VSTM stores the relational information of individual visual items on the basis of global spatial configuration.