Precedence of the Eye Region in Neural Processing of Faces
Author(s)
Issa, Elias; DiCarlo, James
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revealed multiple subregions in monkey inferior temporal cortex (IT) that are selective for images of faces over other objects. The earliest of these subregions, the posterior lateral face patch (PL), has not been studied previously at the neurophysiological level. Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that PL contains a high concentration of “face-selective” cells when tested with standard image sets comparable to those used previously to define the region at the level of fMRI. However, we here report that several different image sets and analytical approaches converge to show that nearly all face-selective PL cells are driven by the presence of a single eye in the context of a face outline. Most strikingly, images containing only an eye, even when incorrectly positioned in an outline, drove neurons nearly as well as full-face images, and face images lacking only this feature led to longer latency responses. Thus, bottom-up face processing is relatively local and linearly integrates features—consistent with parts-based models—grounding investigation of how the presence of a face is first inferred in the IT face processing hierarchy.
Date issued
2012-11Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MITJournal
Journal of Neuroscience
Publisher
Society for Neuroscience
Citation
Issa, E. B., and J. J. DiCarlo. “Precedence of the Eye Region in Neural Processing of Faces.” Journal of Neuroscience 32, no. 47 (November 21, 2012): 16666–16682.
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0270-6474
1529-2401