Abstract
Much of the work on face-selective neural activity has focused on posterior, ventral areas of the human and non-human primate brain. However, electrophysiological and fMRI studies have identified face responses in the prefrontal cortex. Here we used fMRI to characterize these responses in the human prefrontal cortex compared with face selectivity in posterior ventral region. We examined a region at the junction of the right inferior frontal sulcus and the precentral sulcus (right inferior frontal junction or rIFJ) that responds more to faces than to several other object categories. We find that the rIFJ and the right fusiform face area (rFFA) are broadly similar in their responses to whole faces, headless bodies, tools, and scenes. Strikingly, however, while the rFFA preferentially responds to the whole face, the rIFJ response to faces appears to be driven primarily by the eyes. This dissociation provides clues to the functional role of the rIFJ face response. We speculate on this role with reference to emotion perception, gaze perception, and to behavioral relevance more generally.
Highlights
It is well established that for humans and other primates, the visual appearance of the face provides rich, socially relevant cues
To examine the effect of categories in each region of interest (ROI) regardless of task, an ANOVA within each ROI was performed. We found that both right fusiform face area (rFFA) [F(3,45) = 35.05, p < 0.0001] and right inferior frontal junction (rIFJ) [F(3,45) = 18.68, p < 0.0001] showed a significant main effect of category, suggesting that both regions are selective for faces
In the 1-back task, we found that the response to faces was greater than to the next-most-effective category in each ROI [rFFA: t(7) = 2.7, p < 0.05; rIFJ: t(7) = 3.4, p < 0.05]
Summary
It is well established that for humans and other primates, the visual appearance of the face provides rich, socially relevant cues. Scalaidhe et al (1997, 1999) identified a small number of highly face-selective cells in the prefrontal region in monkeys They showed that face selectivity for viewing faces was found both in monkeys that had been previously trained to perform a working memory (WM) task, and in monkeys who had not learned WM tasks. This distinctive population of face neurons responded strongly to faces but weakly or not at all to non-face items such as common objects, scrambled faces, and simple colored shapes, supporting the claim that these neurons are category-selective. These face-selective neurons received more than 95% of input from the temporal visual cortex
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