The Hierarchical Brain Network for Face Recognition

Abstract

Numerous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have identified multiple cortical regions that are involved in face processing in the human brain. However, few studies have characterized the face-processing network as a functioning whole. In this study, we used fMRI to identify face-selective regions in the entire brain and then explore the hierarchical structure of the face-processing network by analyzing functional connectivity among these regions. We identified twenty-five regions mainly in the occipital, temporal and frontal cortex that showed a reliable response selective to faces (versus objects) across participants and across scan sessions. Furthermore, these regions were clustered into three relatively independent sub-networks in a face-recognition task on the basis of the strength of functional connectivity among them. The functionality of the sub-networks likely corresponds to the recognition of individual identity, retrieval of semantic knowledge and representation of emotional information. Interestingly, when the task was switched to object recognition from face recognition, the functional connectivity between the inferior occipital gyrus and the rest of the face-selective regions were significantly reduced, suggesting that this region may serve as an entry node in the face-processing network. In sum, our study provides empirical evidence for cognitive and neural models of face recognition and helps elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying face recognition at the network level.

The relationship between repetition suppression and face perception

“…First, it supports further the close connection between OFA and FFA (Rossion 2008). Recent studies suggest that the OFA and FFA are closely and reciprocally connected to each other (Davies-Thompson and Andrews 2012; Gschwind et al 2012;Nagy et al 2012;Zhen et al 2013) and the current results provide further functional evidence of this connection by showing that even the response reduction, signaling the sensitivity of neurons to repetitions, is related in the two areas. Our results are in agreement with previous findings from patients with acquired prosopagnosia showing that despite the preserved preferential activation for faces, adaptation effects for face identity in the right FFA are absent following lesions encompassing the right OFA (Schiltz et al 2006;Steeves et al 2009).…”

Quantifying interindividual variability and asymmetry of face-selective regions: A probabilistic functional atlas

“…Specifically, the subject-specific activation map was the statistical images derived from the three-run fixed effect analysis; the FSR spatial reference was a map of the high-probability parcels derived from the probabilistic activation map for face recognition (see Supplemental Fig. S1) (Zhen et al, 2013), and the macroanatomical landmark reference was provided by the MNI152 T1 template. The first map provided information on subject-specific activations, whereas the latter two provided the functional and macro-anatomical landmarks for the location and extent of the FSRs.…”

“…A single glance at a face provides rich information on identity, gender, expression, age, and mood. Substantial evidence demonstrates that a dedicated network of the FSRs is recruited for face processing Ishai, 2008;Rossion et al, 2012;Zhen et al, 2013;Zhu et al, 2011). These FSRs could be reliably localized across individuals even with a short period of functional localizer scans (Fox et al, 2009;Kawabata Duncan and Devlin, 2011).…”

Optical-imaging-based neurofeedback to enhance therapeutic intervention in adolescents with autism: methodology and initial data

“…[42][43][44] For offline analysis of the fNIRS signal, we focused on changes in [HbO] at the pSTS region during the functional localizer task over five training sessions. Specifically, we first generated a mask image of the pSTS in xjview.…”