Cells in Temporal Cortex of Conscious Sheep Can Respond Preferentially to the Sight of Faces

Kendrick, Keith M.; Baldwin, B.A.

doi:10.1126/science.3563521

Cited by 239 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Single-cell recording studies have demonstrated the existence of neurons in monkeys that respond to monkey faces in upright orientations and other cells that respond to monkey faces in upside-down orientations. In sheep, however, only cells that respond to upright sheep faces have been found (Kendrick & Baldwin, 1987). The difference, the authors propose, is related to the fact that monkeys, which are arboreal, often view other monkeys upside down but sheep virtually never view other sheep upside down (Kendrick & Baldwin, 1987).…”

Section: Implications For the General Problem Of Shape Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition

Tarr

Pinker

1989

Cognitive Psychology

739

702

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How do we recognize objects despite differences in their retinal projections when they are seen at different orientations? Marr and Nishihara (1978) proposed that shapes are represented in memory as structural descriptions in objectcentered coordinate systems, so that an object is represented identically regardless of its orientation. An alternative hypothesis is that an object is represented in memory in a single representation corresponding to a canonical orientation, and a mental rotation operation transforms an input shape into that orientation before input and memory are compared. A third possibility is that shapes are stored in a set of representations, each corresponding to a different orientation. In four experiments, subjects studied several objects each at a single orientation, and were given extensive practice at naming them quickly, or at classifying them as normal or mirror-reversed, at several orientations. At first, response times increased with departure from the study orientation, with a slope similar to those obtained in classic mental rotation experiments. This suggests that subjects made both judgments by mentally transforming the orientation of the input shape to the one they had initially studied. With practice, subjects recognized the objects almost equally quickly at all the familiar orientations. At that point they were probed with the same objects appearing at novel orientations. Response times for these probes increased with increasing disparity from the previously trained orientations. This indicates that subjects had stored representations of the shapes at each of the practice orientations and recognized shapes at the new orientations by rotating them to one of the stored orientations. The results are consistent with a hybrid of the second (mental transformation) and third (multiple view) hypotheses of shape recognition: input shapes are transformed to a stored view, either the one at the nearest orientation or one at a canonical orientation. Interestingly, when mirrorimages of trained shapes were presented for naming, subjects took the same time at all orientations. This suggests that mental transformations of orientation can take the shortest path of rotation that will align an input shape and its memorized counterpart, in this case a rotation in depth about an axis in the picture plane.

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Section: Implications For the General Problem Of Shape Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition

Tarr

Pinker

1989

Cognitive Psychology

739

702

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The existence of similar neuronal populations in the temporal cortex of a non-primate species, the sheep, responding preferentially to faces was first reported by Kendrick & Baldwin (1987). These initial single-unit studies deliberately focused on trying to ascertain whether faces of specific behavioural and emotional significance were encoded differentially.…”

Section: Face Identity Recognition (A) Non-human Primatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals

Tate

Fischer

Leigh

et al. 2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

166

150

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Visual cues from faces provide important social information relating to individual identity, sexual attraction and emotional state. Behavioural and neurophysiological studies on both monkeys and sheep have shown that specialized skills and neural systems for processing these complex cues to guide behaviour have evolved in a number of mammals and are not present exclusively in humans. Indeed, there are remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species. While human studies with brain imaging and gross neurophysiological recording approaches have revealed global aspects of the face-processing network, they cannot investigate how information is encoded by specific neural networks. Single neuron electrophysiological recording approaches in both monkeys and sheep have, however, provided some insights into the neural encoding principles involved and, particularly, the presence of a remarkable degree of high-level encoding even at the level of a specific face. Recent developments that allow simultaneous recordings to be made from many hundreds of individual neurons are also beginning to reveal evidence for global aspects of a population-based code. This review will summarize what we have learned so far from these animalbased studies about the way the mammalian brain processes the faces and the emotions they can communicate, as well as associated capacities such as how identity and emotion cues are dissociated and how face imagery might be generated. It will also try to highlight what questions and advances in knowledge still challenge us in order to provide a complete understanding of just how brain networks perform this complex and important social recognition task.

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“…The neurons of the prepacemaker nucleus can determine the sign of frequency differences independently of fish orientation because they normally receive inputs from a large part of the body surface (Kawasaki et al 1988b;Keller 1988;Keller and Heiligenberg 1989). Similarly, the convergence of parallel channels in the visual system appears to underlie the position-independent responses of neurons to stimulus properties, such as orientation (Hubel and Wiesel 1962), and complex stimulus configurations, such as hands and faces (Gross et al 1972;Perret et al 1982;Kendrick and Baldwin 1987).…”

Section: Convergence Of Parallel Pathwaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Similar Algorithms in Different Sensory Systems and Animals

Konishi

1990

Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology

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Animals must both recognize and localize the sensory signals essential for their survival and reproduction. Certain cues contained in a signal define its identity and location. Such cues include, for example, the temporal pattern of song for species recognition in crickets and binaural disparities for sound localization in owls. One can predict potential cues and the methods of using them from consideration of the physical attributes of the signal for the task. The discovery of the real cue that is used by the animal. however, requires study of the animal's response to different potential cues.Once the real cue is identified, the next question is how is it encoded in the language of the nervous system? One can develop an algorithm for the solution of the coding problem. There are, however, many possible ways of solving the same problem. There is, however, no theoretical means of identifying the real algorithm. Analysis of neuronal responses to stimuli and study of the connections between neurons may inform us about the coding scheme because the connections and signals between neurons underlie the coding mechanisms, but what neurons tell depends on what question the investigator asks. As Barlow ( 1972) pointed out, " ... neurophysiology and sensation are best linked by looking at the flow of information rather than simpler measures of neuronal activity .. , A neurophysiological investigation of how information is transformed from lower-to higher-order stations may be difficult because information processing is highly nonlinear. Going in the opposite direction. the "topdown" approach is easier in some systems because one starts with the knowledge of what is encoded at the top or at a relatively higher station. The criterion for encoding is the stimulus selectivity of single neurons. The flow of information is therefore inferred from the stimulus selectivities recorded in interconnected stations. For example, the neurons of the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus in the barn owl respond selectively to a combination of interaural time and intensity differences. The neuronal selectivities for these binaural cues have been traced from this nucleus back to the first sites where the selectivities emerge and the pathways for the flow of information can be established .The approach that looks for the flow of information has been used only in a few complex neural systems including the visual system of the macaque monkey (for review, see Van Essen

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Cells in Temporal Cortex of Conscious Sheep Can Respond Preferentially to the Sight of Faces

Cited by 239 publications

References 14 publications

Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition

Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition

Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals

Similar Algorithms in Different Sensory Systems and Animals

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