Abstract
Face processing involves a complex, multimodal brain network. While visual-perceptual face patches in posterior parts of the brain have been studied for over a decade, the existence and properties of face-selective regions in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a relatively new area of research. While regions of OFC are implicated in the emotional processing of faces, this is typically interpreted as a domain-general response to affective value rather than a face- or socially-specific response. However, electrophysiology studies in monkeys have identified neurons in OFC that respond more to faces than any other stimuli. Here, we characterize the prevalence and location of OFC face-selective regions in 20 healthy college students. We did this by including another biologically motivating category (appetizing foods) in a variant of the standard face localizer. Results show that face-selective patches can be identified at the individual level. Furthermore, in both a region of interest (ROI) and a whole brain analysis, medial regions of the OFC were face-selective, while lateral regions were responsive to faces and foods, indicating a domain-general response in lateral OFC. Medial OFC (mOFC) response to faces scales in relationship to a measure of social motivation that is distinct from face processing abilities associated with fusiform cortex.
Highlights
Social animals have evolved neural mechanisms that cause them to preferentially orient towards stimuli with social value, as well as seeking out social interactions because they find them rewarding
We were primarily interested in medial-lateral differences, we report results for all four region of interest (ROI) and refer to analyses using the two medial Anatomical Labeling (AAL) orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) ROIs as anterior-medial OFC and posterior-Medial OFC (mOFC), so as not to confuse this with more general discussions of medial vs. lateral OFC
We found that individual differences in posterior-mOFC activations in response to faces correlated with self-reported social motivation, as measured by the Aloof subscale of the Broader Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAP-Q)
Summary
Social animals have evolved neural mechanisms that cause them to preferentially orient towards stimuli with social value, as well as seeking out social interactions because they find them rewarding. There is evidence from health psychology that social interactions make us feel better physically while the lack of social interactions and social support makes us depressed, lonely, and shortens our lives (Holt-Lunstad et al, 2015). These findings suggest that, we have evolved neural mechanisms for finding conspecifics interesting, essential, and rewarding (Chevallier et al, 2012).
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