Anatomical connections underlying personally-familiar face processing.

Daylín Góngora,Ana Maria Castro-Laguardia,Pedro Valdés-Sosa,Maria A Bobes,Johanna Pérez

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0222087

Abstract

Familiar face processing involves face specific regions (the core face system) as well as other non-specific areas related to processing of person-related information (the extended face system). The connections between core and extended face system areas must be critical for face recognition. Some studies have explored the connectivity pattern of unfamiliar face responding area, but none have explored those areas related to face familiarity processing in the extended system. To study these connections, diffusion weighted imaging with probabilistic tractography was used to estimate the white-matter pathways between core and extended system regions, which were defined from functional magnetic resonance imaging responses to personally-familiar faces. Strong white matter connections were found between occipitotemporal face areas (OFA/FFA) with superior temporal sulcus and insula suggesting the possible existence of direct anatomical connections from face-specific areas to frontal nodes that could underlay the processing of emotional information associated to familiar faces.

Highlights

Face recognition is crucial for social interactions and many studies have tried to understand the neural system underlying familiar face processing
Strong white matter connections were found between occipitotemporal face areas (OFA/fusiform face area (FFA)) with superior temporal sulcus and insula suggesting the possible existence of direct anatomical connections from face-specific areas to frontal nodes that could underlay the processing of emotional information associated to familiar faces
The classical model of neural basis of face perception [6] attached to this core unit a socalled extended system, comprising regions from neural systems involved in other cognitive functions that can be recruited to act in concert with the regions in the core system to extract meaning from faces [1, 6, 7]

Summary

Introduction

Face recognition is crucial for social interactions and many studies have tried to understand the neural system underlying familiar face processing. The classical model of neural basis of face perception [6] attached to this core unit a socalled extended system, comprising regions from neural systems involved in other cognitive functions that can be recruited to act in concert with the regions in the core system to extract meaning from faces [1, 6, 7]. Some of these areas can be in charge of retrieving semantic information and affective response, such as the hippocampus [8], the insula [9] and the amygdala

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