fMRI evidence for the neural representation of faces

Löffler, Günter; Yourganov, Grigori; Wilkinson, Frances; Wilson, Hugh R.

doi:10.1038/nn1538

Cited by 318 publications

(318 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…A recent fMRI study found higher FFA responses to atypical compared with average faces, implicating the FFA in such norm-based coding of face identity (Loffler et al 2005). However, efforts in this study to unconfound such face typicality effects from the greater adaptation effects expected between highly similar faces (in the average-face condition) versus very different faces (in the atypical face condition) were not entirely satisfactory.…”

Section: What Is the Nature Of The Face Representations In The Ffa?contrasting

confidence: 77%

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Kanwisher

Yovel

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,378

980

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Faces are among the most important visual stimuli we perceive, informing us not only about a person's identity, but also about their mood, sex, age and direction of gaze. The ability to extract this information within a fraction of a second of viewing a face is important for normal social interactions and has probably played a critical role in the survival of our primate ancestors. Considerable evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neurophysiological investigations supports the hypothesis that humans have specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of faces (the face-specificity hypothesis). Here, we review the literature on a region of the human brain that appears to play a key role in face perception, known as the fusiform face area (FFA).Section 1 outlines the theoretical background for much of this work. The face-specificity hypothesis falls squarely on one side of a longstanding debate in the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience concerning the extent to which the mind/brain is composed of: (i) special-purpose ('domain-specific') mechanisms, each dedicated to processing a specific kind of information (e.g. faces, according to the face-specificity hypothesis), versus (ii) general-purpose ('domain-general') mechanisms, each capable of operating on any kind of information. Face perception has long served both as one of the prime candidates of a domain-specific process and as a key target for attack by proponents of domain-general theories of brain and mind. Section 2 briefly reviews the prior literature on face perception from behaviour and neurophysiology. This work supports the face-specificity hypothesis and argues against its domain-general alternatives (the individuation hypothesis, the expertise hypothesis and others).Section 3 outlines the more recent evidence on this debate from brain imaging, focusing particularly on the FFA. We review the evidence that the FFA is selectively engaged in face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis. In §4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces. We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (e.g. the face-inversion effect).Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects. The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity. We end by speculating in §6 on some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the ques...

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Section: What Is the Nature Of The Face Representations In The Ffa?contrasting

confidence: 77%

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Kanwisher

Yovel

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,378

980

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“…This problem might be unsolvable, because the mental object space seems to be only locally continuous. Within each object category, individual objects' shapes can be changed to move parametrically from one exemplar to another 50,[80][81][82][83][84][85] : morphing the faces of two members of a species or of members of two different species is relatively straightforward, as the corresponding features in the two faces are immediately obvious (FIG. 3).…”

Section: Maps and Modules In The Ventral Visual Pathwaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting fMRI data: maps, modules and dimensions

2008

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Neuroimaging research over the past decade has revealed a detailed picture of the functional organization of the human brain. Here we focus on two fundamental questions that are raised by the detailed mapping of sensory and cognitive functions and illustrate these questions with findings from the object-vision pathway. First, are functionally specific regions that are located close together best understood as distinct cortical modules or as parts of a larger-scale cortical map? Second, what functional properties define each cortical map or module? We propose a model in which overlapping continuous maps of simple features give rise to discrete modules that are selective for complex stimuli.Advances in brain imaging technology (especially functional MRI (fMRI)) have radically improved our understanding of the functional organization of the human brain (BOX 1). In this Review we describe the organization of the ventral visual pathway, which is characterized by strong selectivity for particular object categories (for example, faces and bodies) at the level of both individual neurons and larger cortical regions. We then consider two central questions: whether this organization reflects maps or modules, and what properties are mapped. In each case we derive clues from the literature on the primary sensory cortex, in which cortical maps have been studied extensively using electrophysiology in animals. We find that apparently modular cortical regions, such as orientation columns and face-selective regions, might be parts of larger maps, and show that it is a substantial challenge to determine the basic properties and dimensions that describe functional organization most parsimoniously. We then propose a new framework that reconciles the existence of graded cortical maps and distinct functional modules. In this framework, the strong category selectivity that exists for faces and other objects might arise from the nonlinear combination of multiple correlated maps for simpler stimulus properties. The ventral visual pathwayThe ventral visual pathway comprises a large cortical region that occupies the ventral and lateral surfaces of the occipital and temporal lobes (FIG. 1). A substantial proportion of fMRI voxels in this pathway are 'object-selective' -that is, they respond more strongly when people view images of objects than when people view scrambled versions of these objects or texture patterns. This object-selective region is often referred to as the lateral occipital complex (LOC) 1 . The LOC has little selectivity for particular stimulus categories 2-4 , but several regions of NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript cortex near the LOC are selective for particular object categories: they respond at least twice as strongly to their 'preferred' stimuli than to other stimuli. For example, in essentially all humans cortical regions can be found that respond selectively to faces (the fusiform face area (FFA) 5,6 and, in many individuals, the occipital face area (OFA)) 7,8 , to pl...

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confidence: 97%

“…(ii) The FFA response level covaries with behavioral performance at identification (11). (iii) The FFA responds more strongly to a sequence of different individuals than to the same face presented repeatedly (8,(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17).For aIT as well, human lesion and neuroimaging studies suggest a role in face identification. Neuroimaging studies (4,(22)(23)(24)26) found anterior temporal activation during face recognition with the activity predictive of performance (22).…”

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confidence: 97%

“…A puzzle to both brain and computer scientists, this computational feat involves a network of brain regions (1) including the fusiform face area (FFA) (2,3) and anterior inferotemporal cortex (aIT) (4). There is a wealth of evidence for an involvement in face identification of both the FFA (1,(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) and aIT (4,16,(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26).…”

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Individual faces elicit distinct response patterns in human anterior temporal cortex

Kriegeskorte

Formisano

Sorger

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

464

423

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Visual face identification requires distinguishing between thousands of faces we know. This computational feat involves a network of brain regions including the fusiform face area (FFA) and anterior inferotemporal cortex (aIT), whose roles in the process are not well understood. Here, we provide the first demonstration that it is possible to discriminate cortical response patterns elicited by individual face images with high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Response patterns elicited by the face images were distinct in aIT but not in the FFA. Individual-level face information is likely to be present in both regions, but our data suggest that it is more pronounced in aIT. One interpretation is that the FFA detects faces and engages aIT for identification.fMRI ͉ information-based ͉ population code W hen we perceive a familiar face, we usually effortlessly recognize its identity. Identification requires distinguishing between thousands of faces we know. A puzzle to both brain and computer scientists, this computational feat involves a network of brain regions (1) including the fusiform face area (FFA) (2, 3) and anterior inferotemporal cortex (aIT) (4). There is a wealth of evidence for an involvement in face identification of both the FFA (1, 5-18) and aIT (4,16,(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26).The FFA responds vigorously whenever a face is perceived (2,3,27). This implies that the FFA distinguishes faces from objects of other categories and suggests the function of face detection (27,28). An additional role for the FFA in face identification has been suggested by three lines of evidence: (i) Lesions in the region of the FFA are frequently associated with deficits at recognizing individual faces (prosopagnosia) (6, 9, 10). (ii) The FFA response level covaries with behavioral performance at identification (11). (iii) The FFA responds more strongly to a sequence of different individuals than to the same face presented repeatedly (8,(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17).For aIT as well, human lesion and neuroimaging studies suggest a role in face identification. Neuroimaging studies (4,(22)(23)(24)26) found anterior temporal activation during face recognition with the activity predictive of performance (22). Lesion studies (19,20,25) suggest that right anterior temporal cortex is involved in face identification. In monkey electrophysiology, in fact, face-identity effects appear stronger in anterior than in posterior inferotemporal cortex (29-31).These lines of evidence suggest an involvement of both the FFA and aIT in face identification. A region representing faces at the individual level should distinguish individual faces by its activity pattern. However, it has never been directly demonstrated that either the FFA or aIT responds with distinct activity patterns to different individual faces.We therefore investigated response patterns elicited by two face images by means of high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3 Tesla (voxels: 2 ϫ 2 ϫ 2 mm 3 ). We asked whether response pattern...

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fMRI evidence for the neural representation of faces

Cited by 318 publications

References 24 publications

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Interpreting fMRI data: maps, modules and dimensions

Individual faces elicit distinct response patterns in human anterior temporal cortex

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