Face processing supports our ability to recognize friend from foe, form tribes, and understand the emotional implications of changes in facial musculature. This skill relies on a distributed network of brain regions but how these regions interact is poorly understood. Here, we integrate anatomical and functional connectivity measurements with behavioral assays to create a global model of the face connectome. We dissect key features such as the network topology and fiber composition. We propose a neurocognitive model with three core streams, and face processing along these streams occurs in a parallel and reciprocal fashion. While long-range fiber paths are important, face network is dominated by short-range fibers. Last, we provide some evidence that the well-known right lateralization of face processing arises from imbalanced intra/interhemispheric connections. In sum, the face network relies on dynamic communication across highly structured fiber tracts, which enables coherent face processing that underpins behavior and cognition.

Anil and Others, (2019) Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness. Nature Human Behaviour, 3 (2). pp. 104-107.

Our capacity to form and retrieve episodic memories improves over childhood but declines in old age. Understanding these changes requires decomposing episodic memory into its components. Two such components are (a) mnemonic discrimination of similar people, objects, and contexts, and (b) relational binding of these elements. We designed novel memory tasks to assess these component processes using animations that are appropriate across the life span (ages 4–80 in our sample). In Experiment 1, we assessed mnemonic discrimination of objects as well as relational binding, in a common task format. Both components follow an inverted -shaped curve across age but were positively correlated only in the aging group. In Experiment 2, we examined mnemonic discrimination of context and its effect on relational binding. Relational memory in low-similarity contexts showed robust gains between the ages of 4 and 6, whereas 6-year-olds performed similarly to adults. In contrast, relational memory in high-similarity contexts showed more protracted development, with 4- and 6-year-olds both performing worse than young adults and not differing from each other. Relational memory in both context conditions declined in aging. This multiprocess approach provides important theoretical insights into life span changes in episodic memory.

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The connection between memory and self-consciousness has been a central topic in philosophy of memory. When remembering an event we experienced in the past, not only do we experience being the subject of the conscious episode, but we also experience being the protagonist in the memory scene. This is the “phenomenal presence of self.” To explore this special sense of self in memory, this paper focuses on the issue of how one identifies oneself in episodic simulation at the retrieval of memory and draws attention to the field and observer perspectives in episodic memory. Metzinger (2013a,b, 2017) recently introduced the concept of the phenomenal unit of identification (UI) to characterize the phenomenal property that gives rise to the conscious experience of “I am this.” This paper shows how observer-perspective remembering provides an interesting opportunity for studying the sense of self. It is argued that observer-perspective remembering is a stable state of consciousness that is distinct from autoscopic phenomena with respect to the dimensions of minimal phenomenal self (MPS). Together, the notion of UI and the particular style of remembering offer a way of understanding the phenomenal presence of self, and three possible ways in which phenomenal properties constitute UI in memory are raised. The study of perspectives in episodic simulation may prompt new empirical and conceptual issues concerning both the sense of identity and the relationship between MPS and extended self.