Occipital Face Area Research Articles

Face processing in a case of high functioning autism with developmental prosopagnosia

The ability to "read" the information about facial identity, expressed emotions, and intentions is crucial for non‑verbal social interaction. Neuroimaging and clinical studies consequently link face perception with fusiform gyrus (FG) and occipital face area (OFA) activity. Here we investigated face processing in an adult, patient PK, diagnosed with both high functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental prosopagnosia (DP). Both disorders have a significant impact on face perception and recognition, thus creating a unique neurodevelopmental condition. We used eye‑tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method. Eye‑tracking and fMRI results of PK were compared to results of control subjects. Patient PK showed atypical gaze‑fixation strategy during face perception and typical patterns of brain activations in the FG and OFA. However, a significant difference between PK and control subjects was found in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus/middle temporal gyrus (aSTS/MTG). In PK the left aSTS/MTG was hypo‑activated in comparison to the control subjects. Additionally, functional connectivity analysis revealed decreased inter‑hemispheric connectivity between right and left aSTS/MTG in 'ASD and DP' patient during face recognition performance as compared to the control subjects. The lack of activity in the left aSTS/MTG observed in the case of the clinical subject, combined with the behavioral, eye‑tracking, and neuropsychological results, suggests that impairment of the cognitive mechanism of face recognition involves higher level of processing. It seems to be related to insufficient access to semantic knowledge about the person when prompted by face stimuli.

The neural network for face recognition: Insights from an fMRI study on developmental prosopagnosia

Face recognition is supported by collaborative work of multiple face-responsive regions in the brain. Based on findings from individuals with normal face recognition ability, a neural model has been proposed with the occipital face area (OFA), fusiform face area (FFA), and face-selective posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) as the core face network (CFN) and the rest of the face-responsive regions as the extended face network (EFN). However, little is known about how these regions work collaboratively for face recognition in our daily life. Here we focused on individuals suffering developmental prosopagnosia (DP), a neurodevelopmental disorder specifically impairing face recognition, to shed light on the infrastructure of the neural model of face recognition. Specifically, we used a variant of global brain connectivity method to comprehensively explore resting-state functional connectivity (FC) among face-responsive regions in a large sample of DPs (N = 64). We found that both the FCs within the CFN and those between the CFN and EFN were largely reduced in DP. Importantly, the right OFA and FFA served as the dysconnectivity hubs within the CFN, i.e., FCs concerning these two regions within the CFN were largely disrupted. In addition, DPs' right FFA also showed reduced FCs with the EFN. Moreover, these disrupted FCs were related to DP's behavioral deficit in face recognition, with the FCs from the FFA to the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and pSTS the most predictive. Based on these findings, we proposed a revised neural model of face recognition demonstrating the relatedness of interactions among face-responsive regions to face recognition.

Development of face recognition: Dynamic causal modelling of MEG data

Electrophysiological studies of adults indicate that brain activity is enhanced during viewing of repeated faces, at a latency of about 250 ms after the onset of the face (M250/N250). The present study aimed to determine if this effect was also present in preschool-aged children, whose brain activity was measured in a custom-sized pediatric MEG system. The results showed that, unlike adults, face repetition did not show any significant modulation of M250 amplitude in children; however children’s M250 latencies were significantly faster for repeated than non-repeated faces. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) of the M250 in both age groups tested the effects of face repetition within the core face network including the occipital face area (OFA), the fusiform face area (FFA), and the superior temporal sulcus (STS). DCM revealed that repetition of identical faces altered both forward and backward connections in children and adults; however the modulations involved inputs to both FFA and OFA in adults but only to OFA in children. These findings suggest that the amplitude-insensitivity of the immature M250 may be due to a weaker connection between the FFA and lower visual areas.

Representational similarity analysis of EEG and fMRI responses to face identities and emotional expressions

Currently it is acknowledged that the cortical network processing facial information consists of several areas that process different aspects of faces from low-level features to person-related knowledge. We applied multivariate representational similarity analysis to investigate how parametric variation of facial expressions and identities affect temporal (EEG) and spatial (fMRI) patterns of brain activity. As stimuli, we used faces with neutral expression, happy, fearful, angry, and morphed (50%) versions of the expressions, as well as four core identities (two male and two female) and all combinations of these identities morphed (33 and 67%) to each other. In total, we had 112 different faces (7 expressions from 16 identities). The representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) were calculated for each time point in the event related potentials (ERPs) from EEG, and for each voxel in fMRI data by using a searchlight approach. Low-level stimulus model RDMs were based on spatial frequency (SF) spectrum of the whole face, the region around the eyes or the region around the mouth. Additional model RDMs were based on the emotional expressions, identities, and interactions between these factors. ERP RDMs correlated with SF models between 220-460 ms, with the identity model between 270-420 ms and 670-1000 ms, and with emotion models at 180 ms, between 230-500 ms, and at 600 ms. There was also an interaction between emotion type and identity. In fMRI, activity patterns related to expressions were found in early visual areas (V1-V3), lateral occipital complex (LOC), occipital face area (OFA), fusiform face area (FFA), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and left middle frontal regions, and identity related patterns only in frontal areas. Distinct distributions of positive and negative correlations across face selective areas suggest a different type of processing in LOC, OFA and FFA in comparison to other regions in the face network. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017

Being BOLD: The neural dynamics of face perception

According to a non-hierarchical view of human cortical face processing, selective responses to faces may emerge in a higher-order area of the hierarchy, in the lateral part of the middle fusiform gyrus (fusiform face area [FFA]) independently from face-selective responses in the lateral inferior occipital gyrus (occipital face area [OFA]), a lower order area. Here we provide a stringent test of this hypothesis by gradually revealing segmented face stimuli throughout strict linear descrambling of phase information [Ales et al., 2012]. Using a short sampling rate (500 ms) of fMRI acquisition and single subject statistical analysis, we show a face-selective responses emerging earlier, that is, at a lower level of structural (i.e., phase) information, in the FFA compared with the OFA. In both regions, a face detection response emerging at a lower level of structural information for upright than inverted faces, both in the FFA and OFA, in line with behavioral responses and with previous findings of delayed responses to inverted faces with direct recordings of neural activity were also reported. Overall, these results support the non-hierarchical view of human cortical face processing and open new perspectives for time-resolved analysis at the single subject level of fMRI data obtained during continuously evolving visual stimulation. Hum Brain Mapp 38:120-139, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The superior temporal sulcus is causally connected to the amygdala: A combined TBS-fMRI study

Nonhuman primate neuroanatomical studies have identified a cortical pathway from the superior temporal sulcus (STS) projecting into dorsal subregions of the amygdala, but whether this same pathway exists in humans is unknown. Here, we addressed this question by combining theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) with fMRI to test the prediction that the STS and amygdala are functionally connected during face perception. Human participants (N = 17) were scanned, over two sessions, while viewing 3 s video clips of moving faces, bodies, and objects. During these sessions, TBS was delivered over the face-selective right posterior STS (rpSTS) or over the vertex control site. A region-of-interest analysis revealed results consistent with our hypothesis. Namely, TBS delivered over the rpSTS reduced the neural response to faces (but not to bodies or objects) in the rpSTS, right anterior STS (raSTS), and right amygdala, compared with TBS delivered over the vertex. By contrast, TBS delivered over the rpSTS did not significantly reduce the neural response to faces in the right fusiform face area or right occipital face area. This pattern of results is consistent with the existence of a cortico-amygdala pathway in humans for processing face information projecting from the rpSTS, via the raSTS, into the amygdala. This conclusion is consistent with nonhuman primate neuroanatomy and with existing face perception models. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Neuroimaging studies have identified multiple face-selective regions in the brain, but the functional connections between these regions are unknown. In the present study, participants were scanned with fMRI while viewing movie clips of faces, bodies, and objects before and after transient disruption of the face-selective right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). Results showed that TBS disruption reduced the neural response to faces, but not to bodies or objects, in the rpSTS, right anterior STS (raSTS), and right amygdala. These results are consistent with the existence of a cortico-amygdala pathway in humans for processing face information projecting from the rpSTS, via the raSTS, into the amygdala. This conclusion is consistent with nonhuman primate neuroanatomy and with existing face perception models.

Developmental Reorganization of the Core and Extended Face Networks Revealed by Global Functional Connectivity

Prior studies on development of functional specialization in human brain mainly focus on age-related increases in regional activation and connectivity among regions. However, a few recent studies on the face network demonstrate age-related decrease in face-specialized activation in the extended face network (EFN), in addition to increase in activation in the core face network (CFN). Here we used a voxel-based global brain connectivity approach to investigate whether development of the face network exhibited both increase and decrease in network connectivity. We found the voxel-wise resting-state functional connectivity (FC) within the CFN increased with age in bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus, suggesting the integration of the CFN during development. Interestingly, the FC of the voxels in the EFN to the right fusiform face area and occipital face area decreased with age, suggesting that the CFN segregated from the EFN during development. Moreover, the age-related connectivity in the CFN was related to behavioral performance in face processing. Overall, our study demonstrated developmental reorganization of the face network achieved by both integration within the CFN and segregation of the CFN from the EFN, which may account for the simultaneous increases and decreases in neural activation during the development of the face network.

Not all visual symmetry is equal: Partially distinct neural bases for vertical and horizontal symmetry.

Visual mirror symmetry plays an important role in visual perception in both human and animal vision; its importance is reflected in the fact that it can be extracted automatically during early stages of visual processing. However, how this extraction is implemented at the cortical level remains an open question. Given the importance of symmetry in visual perception, one possibility is that there is a network which extracts all types of symmetry irrespective of axis of orientation; alternatively, symmetry along different axes might be encoded by different brain regions, implying that there is no single neural mechanism for symmetry processing. Here we used fMRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to compare the neural basis of the two main types of symmetry found in the natural world, vertical and horizontal symmetry. TMS was applied over either right Lateral Occipital Cortex (LO), right Occipital Face Area (OFA) or Vertex while participants were asked to detect symmetry in low-level dot configurations. Whereas detection of vertical symmetry was impaired by TMS over both LO and OFA, detection of horizontal symmetry was delayed by stimulation of LO only. Thus, different types of visual symmetry rely on partially distinct cortical networks.

The occipital face area is causally involved in the formation of identity-specific face representations.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and neuroimaging studies suggest a role of the right occipital face area (rOFA) in early facial feature processing. However, the degree to which rOFA is necessary for the encoding of facial identity has been less clear. Here we used a state-dependent TMS paradigm, where stimulation preferentially facilitates attributes encoded by less active neural populations, to investigate the role of the rOFA in face perception and specifically in image-independent identity processing. Participants performed a familiarity decision task for famous and unknown target faces, preceded by brief (200ms) or longer (3500ms) exposures to primes which were either an image of a different identity (DiffID), another image of the same identity (SameID), the same image (SameIMG), or a Fourier-randomized noise pattern (NOISE) while either the rOFA or the vertex as control was stimulated by single-pulse TMS. Strikingly, TMS to the rOFA eliminated the advantage of SameID over DiffID condition, thereby disrupting identity-specific priming, while leaving image-specific priming (better performance for SameIMG vs. SameID) unaffected. Our results suggest that the role of rOFA is not limited to low-level feature processing, and emphasize its role in image-independent facial identity processing and the formation of identity-specific memory traces.

Neural representation of geometry and surface properties in object and scene perception

Multiple cortical regions are crucial for perceiving the visual world, yet the processes shaping representations in these regions are unclear. To address this issue, we must elucidate how perceptual features shape representations of the environment. Here, we explore how the weighting of different visual features affects neural representations of objects and scenes, focusing on the scene-selective parahippocampal place area (PPA), but additionally including the retrosplenial complex (RSC), occipital place area (OPA), lateral occipital (LO) area, fusiform face area (FFA) and occipital face area (OFA). Across three experiments, we examined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity while human observers viewed scenes and objects that varied in geometry (shape/layout) and surface properties (texture/material). Interestingly, we found equal sensitivity in the PPA for these properties within a scene, revealing that spatial-selectivity alone does not drive activation within this cortical region. We also observed sensitivity to object texture in PPA, but not to the same degree as scene texture, and representations in PPA varied when objects were placed within scenes. We conclude that PPA may process surface properties in a domain-specific manner, and that the processing of scene texture and geometry is equally-weighted in PPA and may be mediated by similar underlying neuronal mechanisms.

Seeing Double: Exploring the Phenomenology of Self-Reported Absence of Rivalry in Bistable Pictures.

Ambiguous images such as Rubin’s vase-face can be interpreted in at least two different ways. These interpretations are typically taken to be mutually exclusive, and ambiguous images have thus served as models of perceptual competition. Here, we present data that challenges this view. In an online survey, we found that a large proportion of people within the general population reported that the two percepts were not competing but could be perceived simultaneously. Of those who reported that they could see both percepts simultaneously, we invited 17 participants to take part in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment. In the scanner, participants saw images that could be interpreted as either a landscape or a face and reported at every point in time whether they perceived predominantly the face, the landscape, or both simultaneously. We explored behavioral and neurophysiological (with fMRI) correlates of the reported subjective experience of entertaining two percepts simultaneously by comparing them to those of the simple percepts (i.e., face or landscape). First, by comparing percept durations, we found that the simultaneous state was as stable as the two other percepts. Second, by measuring blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal levels within the fusiform face area (FFA), occipital face area (OFA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA), we found evidence from objective data that confirmed the subjective reports. While the results in FFA and OFA were not conclusive, in PPA, BOLD signal levels during subjective reports of perceiving both a landscape and a face were lower than the BOLD signal levels associated with reports of perceiving a landscape (and, in turn, reports of seeing a landscape were associated with greater BOLD signal levels than reports of seeing a face, thus suggesting that BOLD signal levels in PPA are a valid correlate of subjective experience in this task). In sum, the objective measures suggest that entertaining two percepts simultaneously in mind can be regarded as a distinct (mixed) perceptual state. We argue with these results that a more central role of subjective report in cognitive neuroscience is sometimes warranted.

Mapping the impairment in decoding static facial expressions of emotion in prosopagnosia.

Acquired prosopagnosia is characterized by a deficit in face recognition due to diverse brain lesions, but interestingly most prosopagnosic patients suffering from posterior lesions use the mouth instead of the eyes for face identification. Whether this bias is present for the recognition of facial expressions of emotion has not yet been addressed. We tested PS, a pure case of acquired prosopagnosia with bilateral occipitotemporal lesions anatomically sparing the regions dedicated for facial expression recognition. PS used mostly the mouth to recognize facial expressions even when the eye area was the most diagnostic. Moreover, PS directed most of her fixations towards the mouth. Her impairment was still largely present when she was instructed to look at the eyes, or when she was forced to look at them. Control participants showed a performance comparable to PS when only the lower part of the face was available. These observations suggest that the deficits observed in PS with static images are not solely attentional, but are rooted at the level of facial information use. This study corroborates neuroimaging findings suggesting that the Occipital Face Area might play a critical role in extracting facial features that are integrated for both face identification and facial expression recognition in static images.

Directed network discovery with dynamic network modelling

Cognitive tasks recruit multiple brain regions. Understanding how these regions influence each other (the network structure) is an important step to characterize the neural basis of cognitive processes. Often, limited evidence is available to restrict the range of hypotheses a priori, and techniques that sift efficiently through a large number of possible network structures are needed (network discovery). This article introduces a novel modelling technique for network discovery (Dynamic Network Modelling or DNM) that builds on ideas from Granger Causality and Dynamic Causal Modelling introducing three key changes: (1) efficient network discovery is implemented with statistical tests on the consistency of model parameters across participants, (2) the tests take into account the magnitude and sign of each influence, and (3) variance explained in independent data is used as an absolute (rather than relative) measure of the quality of the network model. In this article, we outline the functioning of DNM, we validate DNM in simulated data for which the ground truth is known, and we report an example of its application to the investigation of influences between regions during emotion recognition, revealing top-down influences from brain regions encoding abstract representations of emotions (medial prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus) onto regions engaged in the perceptual analysis of facial expressions (occipital face area and fusiform face area) when participants are asked to switch between reporting the emotional valence and the age of a face.

Causal evidence of the involvement of the right occipital face area in face-identity acquisition

There is growing evidence that the occipital face area (OFA), originally thought to be involved in the construction of a low-level representation of the physical features of a face, is also taking part in higher-level face processing. To test whether the OFA is causally involved in the learning of novel face identities, we have used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) together with a sequential sorting – face matching paradigm (Andrews et al. 2015). First, participants sorted images of two unknown persons during the initial learning phase while either their right OFA or the Vertex was stimulated using TMS. In the subsequent test phase, we measured the participants’ face matching performance for novel images of the previously trained identities and for two novel identities. We found that face-matching performance accuracy was higher for the trained as compared to the novel identities in the vertex control group, suggesting that the sorting task led to incidental learning of the identities involved. However, no such difference was observed between trained and novel identities in the rOFA stimulation group. Our results support the hypothesis that the role of the rOFA is not limited to the processing of low-level physical features, but it has a significant causal role in face identity encoding and in the formation of identity-specific memory-traces.

Disentangling the Representation of Identity from Head View Along the Human Face Processing Pathway

Neural models of a distributed system for face perception implicate a network of regions in the ventral visual stream for recognition of identity. Here, we report a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neural decoding study in humans that shows that this pathway culminates in the right inferior frontal cortex face area (rIFFA) with a representation of individual identities that has been disentangled from variable visual features in different images of the same person. At earlier stages in the pathway, processing begins in early visual cortex and the occipital face area with representations of head view that are invariant across identities, and proceeds to an intermediate level of representation in the fusiform face area in which identity is emerging but still entangled with head view. Three-dimensional, view-invariant representation of identities in the rIFFA may be the critical link to the extended system for face perception, affording activation of person knowledge and emotional responses to familiar faces.

The visually guided development of facial representations in the primate ventral visual pathway: A computer modeling study.

Experimental studies have shown that neurons at an intermediate stage of the primate ventral visual pathway, occipital face area, encode individual facial parts such as eyes and nose while neurons in the later stages, middle face patches, are selective to the full face by encoding the spatial relations between facial features. We have performed a computer modeling study to investigate how these cell firing properties may develop through unsupervised visually guided learning. A hierarchical neural network model of the primate's ventral visual pathway is trained by presenting many randomly generated faces to the network while a local learning rule modifies the strengths of the synaptic connections between neurons in successive layers. After training, the model is found to have developed the experimentally observed cell firing properties. In particular, we have shown how the visual system forms separate representations of facial features such as the eyes, nose, and mouth as well as monotonically tuned representations of the spatial relationships between these facial features. We also demonstrated how the primate brain learns to represent facial expression independently of facial identity. Furthermore, based on the simulation results, we propose that neurons encoding different global attributes simply represent different spatial relationships between local features with monotonic tuning curves or particular combinations of these spatial relations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Recognizing approaching walkers: Neural decoding of person familiarity in cortical areas responsive to faces, bodies, and biological motion

In natural viewing environments, we recognize other people as they move through the world. Behavioral studies indicate that the face, body, and gait all contribute to recognition. We examined the neural basis of person recognition using a decoding approach aimed at discriminating the patterns of neural activity elicited in response to seeing visually familiar versus unfamiliar people in motion. Participants learned 30 identities by viewing multiple videos of the people in action. Recognition was tested inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner using 8-s videos of 60 people (30 learned and 30 novel) approaching from a distance (~13m). Full brain images were taken while participants watched the approach. These images captured neural activity at four time points (TRs) corresponding to progressively closer views of the walker. We used pattern classification techniques to examine familiarity decoding in lateralized ROIs and the combination of left and right (bilateral) regions. Results showed accurate decoding of familiarity at the farthest distance in the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus (bpSTS). At a closer distance, familiarity was decoded in the bilateral extrastriate body area (bEBA) and left fusiform body area (lFBA). The most robust decoding was found in the time window during which the average behavioral recognition decision was made – and when the face came into clearer view. Multiple regions, including the right occipital face area (rOFA), bOFA, bFBA, bpSTS, and broadly distributed face- and body-selective voxels in the ventral temporal cortex decoded walker familiarity in this time window. At the closest distance, the lFBA decoded familiarity. These results reveal a broad system of ventral and dorsal visual areas that support person recognition from face, body, and gait. Although the face has been the focus of most person recognition studies, these findings remind us of the evolutionary advantage of being able to differentiate the people we know from strangers at a safe distance.

Perception and Processing of Faces in the Human Brain Is Tuned to Typical Feature Locations.

Faces are salient social stimuli whose features attract a stereotypical pattern of fixations. The implications of this gaze behavior for perception and brain activity are largely unknown. Here, we characterize and quantify a retinotopic bias implied by typical gaze behavior toward faces, which leads to eyes and mouth appearing most often in the upper and lower visual field, respectively. We found that the adult human visual system is tuned to these contingencies. In two recognition experiments, recognition performance for isolated face parts was better when they were presented at typical, rather than reversed, visual field locations. The recognition cost of reversed locations was equal to ∼60% of that for whole face inversion in the same sample. Similarly, an fMRI experiment showed that patterns of activity evoked by eye and mouth stimuli in the right inferior occipital gyrus could be separated with significantly higher accuracy when these features were presented at typical, rather than reversed, visual field locations. Our findings demonstrate that human face perception is determined not only by the local position of features within a face context, but by whether features appear at the typical retinotopic location given normal gaze behavior. Such location sensitivity may reflect fine-tuning of category-specific visual processing to retinal input statistics. Our findings further suggest that retinotopic heterogeneity might play a role for face inversion effects and for the understanding of conditions affecting gaze behavior toward faces, such as autism spectrum disorders and congenital prosopagnosia. Faces attract our attention and trigger stereotypical patterns of visual fixations, concentrating on inner features, like eyes and mouth. Here we show that the visual system represents face features better when they are shown at retinal positions where they typically fall during natural vision. When facial features were shown at typical (rather than reversed) visual field locations, they were discriminated better by humans and could be decoded with higher accuracy from brain activity patterns in the right occipital face area. This suggests that brain representations of face features do not cover the visual field uniformly. It may help us understand the well-known face-inversion effect and conditions affecting gaze behavior toward faces, such as prosopagnosia and autism spectrum disorders.

Position selectivity in face-sensitive visual cortex to facial and nonfacial stimuli: an fMRI study.

BackgroundEvidence for position sensitivity in object‐selective visual areas has been building. On one hand, most of the relevant studies have utilized stimuli for which the areas are optimally selective and examine small sections of cortex. On the other hand, visual field maps established with nonspecific stimuli have been found in increasingly large areas of visual cortex, though generally not in areas primarily responsive to faces.Methods fMRI was used to study the position sensitivity of the occipital face area (OFA) and the fusiform face area (FFA) to both standard rotating wedge retinotopic mapping stimuli and quadrant presentations of synthetic facial stimuli. Analysis methods utilized were both typical, that is, mean univariate BOLD signals and multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), and novel, that is, distribution of voxels to pattern classifiers and use of responses to nonfacial retinotopic mapping stimuli to classify responses to facial stimuli.ResultsPolar angle sensitivity was exhibited to standard retinotopic mapping stimuli with a stronger contralateral bias in OFA than in FFA, a stronger bias toward the vertical meridian in FFA than in OFA, and a bias across both areas toward the inferior visual field. Contralateral hemispheric lateralization of both areas was again shown using synthetic face stimuli based on univariate BOLD signals, MVPA, and the biased contribution of voxels toward multivariate classifiers discriminating the contralateral visual field. Classifiers based on polar angle responsivity were used to classify the patterns of activation above chance levels to face stimuli in the OFA but not in the FFA.ConclusionsBoth the OFA and FFA exhibit quadrant sensitivity to face stimuli, though the OFA exhibits greater position responsivity across stimuli than the FFA and includes overlap in the response pattern to the disparate stimulus types. Such biases are consistent with varying position sensitivity along different surfaces of occipito‐temporal cortex.

Brain Regions Selective for Face Recognition and Memory Processing Can Predict Performance on the Taiwanese Face Memory Test (TFMT)

Face recognition and memory entail not only encoding the perceptual input of a face upon its presence but also retrieving a relatively permanent representation in spite of variation in illumination, pose, an/or expression. For more than two decades, a network of face-selective regions has been identified as the core system of face processing, including occipital face area (OFA), fusiform face area (FFA), and posterior region of superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). However, recent studies have proposed that ventral route of face processing and memory ends at the anterior temporal lobes (i.e., vATLs), which may play an important role bridging face perception and face memory. Here we examined whether neural activity in vATLs can effectively predict performance on a face memory test that requires recognition circumventing variations in pose and lighting. To that end, we first identified during the functional scan the core face network by asking participants to perform a one-back task, while viewing either static images or dynamic videos. Compared to static localizers, dynamic localizers were far more effective identifying regions-of-interest (ROIs) in the core face processing system. We then determined for each ROI (OFA, FFA, pSTS, and vATL), the cluster size associated with maximum face selectivity. Participants were called back with various delays to perform a variety of face processing tasks, including the Taiwanese Face Memory Test (TFMT), which was constructed largely following Cambridge Face Memory Task (CFMT) and used images drawn from a recently established Taiwanese face database. Like CFMT, TFMT was administered in three consecutive stages with increasing reliance on robust face representations. Correlation analyses revealed that participants with greater neural adaptation in the right vATLs demonstrated better recognition and memory performance on TFMT, suggesting that individual differences in constructing invariant and robust neural representation of faces can predict behavioural performance on face recognition and memory. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016