Patches with Links: A Unified System for Processing Faces in the Macaque Temporal Lobe

Moeller, Sebastian; Freiwald, Winrich A.; Tsao, Doris Y.

doi:10.1126/science.1157436

Cited by 387 publications

(407 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

355

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…1 A and B). Recently, these 2 main patches have been further subdivided into smaller face clusters (18). However, these subdivisions were not consistently detected in our macaque subjects; therefore, they are not discussed here.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

“…The direct comparison here demonstrates that apparently homologous areas also exist in the human brain. Circumstantial evidence (mostly collected before the localization of the face patches per se) suggests that these face-responsive regions are anatomically interconnected in a wider network of face processing throughout the brain (18,40,(42)(43)(44).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An anterior temporal face patch in human cortex, predicted by macaque maps

Rajimehr

Young

Tootell

2009

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

260

235

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Increasing evidence suggests that primate visual cortex has a specialized architecture for processing discrete object categories such as faces. Human fMRI studies have described a localized region in the fusiform gyrus [the fusiform face area (FFA)] that responds selectively to faces. In contrast, in nonhuman primates, electrophysiological and fMRI studies have instead revealed 2 apparently analogous regions of face representation: the posterior temporal face patch (PTFP) and the anterior temporal face patch (ATFP). An earlier study suggested that human FFA is homologous to the PTFP in macaque. However, in humans, no obvious homologue of the macaque ATFP has been demonstrated. Here, we used fMRI to map face-selective sites in both humans and macaques, based on equivalent stimuli in a quantitative topographic comparison. This fMRI evidence suggests that such a face-selective area exists in human anterior inferotemporal cortex, comprising the apparent homologue of the fMRI-defined ATFP in macaques.face processing ͉ fMRI ͉ inferotemporal cortex ͉ macaque-human homology T he fusiform face area (FFA) is one of the most distinctive regions in the human ventral temporal cortex. A wide range of noninvasive techniques, including PET, fMRI, ERP, and MEG have shown that FFA responds selectively to images of faces, relative to a wide variety of control objects (1-7). Such approaches have revealed an enormous amount about face selectivity in this distinctive region of human cerebral cortex.Such noninvasive techniques cannot furnish the kind of incisive information that is available from classical neurobiological techniques (e.g., single-unit recording) in nonhuman primates. These 2 realms have begun to be bridged by recent fMRI studies in awake monkeys, which demonstrated that apparently homologous face-selective regions also exist in macaque inferotemporal (IT) cortex (8,9). Subsequent experiments reported that Ϸ97% of the single units in the largest face-selective region (the so-called posterior temporal face patch, located in caudal TE) respond strongly and selectively to images of faces, compared with images of control objects (10). This fMRI and physiological evidence supports the idea that this region of monkey cortex is indeed selective for faces.A computational transformation concluded that this posterior temporal face patch (PTFP) in macaques is located in a cortical region that corresponds topographically to area FFA in human subjects (8). This analysis assumes that neighborhood relations between specific cortical areas are evolutionarily conserved across the sheet of cortical gray matter, as validated in many previous human-monkey comparisons (11-14).However, this conclusion raises a significant issue. In macaques, an additional face-selective region is consistently found further anterior in the temporal lobe, in rostral TE (8-10, 15, 16); here, this is termed the anterior temporal face patch (ATFP). However, in humans, no such area (i.e., anterior to FFA) has been reported by conventional fMRI mapping of face rep...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An anterior temporal face patch in human cortex, predicted by macaque maps

Rajimehr

Young

Tootell

2009

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

260

235

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Strong evidence that these distributed face patches constitute a functional system for face processing comes from a study using direct electrical stimulation of face-selective patches [50]. Stimulation of individual face patches induced strong activation within a subset of the other face patches (as measured with simultaneous fMRI); direct stimulation of sites just outside these face patches induced activity elsewhere in ventral temporal cortex, including STS, but not in the face patches.…”

Section: Recent Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The neuropsychology of face perception: beyond simple dissociations and functional selectivity

Atkinson

Adolphs

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

151

111

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Face processing relies on a distributed, patchy network of cortical regions in the temporal and frontal lobes that respond disproportionately to face stimuli, other cortical regions that are not even primarily visual (such as somatosensory cortex), and subcortical structures such as the amygdala. Higher-level face perception abilities, such as judging identity, emotion and trustworthiness, appear to rely on an intact face-processing network that includes the occipital face area (OFA), whereas lower-level face categorization abilities, such as discriminating faces from objects, can be achieved without OFA, perhaps via the direct connections to the fusiform face area (FFA) from several extrastriate cortical areas. Some lesion, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings argue against a strict feed-forward hierarchical model of face perception, in which the OFA is the principal and common source of input for other visual and non-visual cortical regions involved in face perception, including the FFA, faceselective superior temporal sulcus and somatosensory cortex. Instead, these findings point to a more interactive model in which higher-level face perception abilities depend on the interplay between several functionally and anatomically distinct neural regions. Furthermore, the nature of these interactions may depend on the particular demands of the task. We review the lesion and TMS literature on this topic and highlight the dynamic and distributed nature of face processing.

show abstract

“…Patients with schizophrenia (22), social phobia (23), and autism (24) also show abnormal facial scanning patterns, which have been hypothesized to result from amygdala dysfunction (25). The functional role of the amygdala is supported by its connection with visual cortices specialized for face processing (26)(27)(28) as well as reciprocal connections with multiple visually responsive areas in the temporal (29)(30)(31) and frontal lobes (32). All of these findings, while supporting a clear role for the amygdala in face processing, also suggest that this role may be relatively specific for certain properties or features of faces, raising the question of what function distinguishes the amygdala's role in face processing from the better-known role of temporal cortex in face processing (Discussion).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurons in the human amygdala selective for perceived emotion

Wang

Tudusciuc

Mamelak³

et al. 2014

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

124

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The human amygdala plays a key role in recognizing facial emotions and neurons in the monkey and human amygdala respond to the emotional expression of faces. However, it remains unknown whether these responses are driven primarily by properties of the stimulus or by the perceptual judgments of the perceiver. We investigated these questions by recording from over 200 single neurons in the amygdalae of 7 neurosurgical patients with implanted depth electrodes. We presented degraded fear and happy faces and asked subjects to discriminate their emotion by button press. During trials where subjects responded correctly, we found neurons that distinguished fear vs. happy emotions as expressed by the displayed faces. During incorrect trials, these neurons indicated the patients' subjective judgment. Additional analysis revealed that, on average, all neuronal responses were modulated most by increases or decreases in response to happy faces, and driven predominantly by judgments about the eye region of the face stimuli. Following the same analyses, we showed that hippocampal neurons, unlike amygdala neurons, only encoded emotions but not subjective judgment. Our results suggest that the amygdala specifically encodes the subjective judgment of emotional faces, but that it plays less of a role in simply encoding aspects of the image array. The conscious percept of the emotion shown in a face may thus arise from interactions between the amygdala and its connections within a distributed cortical network, a scheme also consistent with the long response latencies observed in human amygdala recordings.human single unit | medial temporal lobe | limbic system | hippocampus | intracranial

show abstract

Patches with Links: A Unified System for Processing Faces in the Macaque Temporal Lobe

Cited by 387 publications

References 30 publications

An anterior temporal face patch in human cortex, predicted by macaque maps

An anterior temporal face patch in human cortex, predicted by macaque maps

The neuropsychology of face perception: beyond simple dissociations and functional selectivity

Neurons in the human amygdala selective for perceived emotion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About