Face Processing and TMS

Abstract

<p>Faces are rich sources of social information that simultaneously convey someone’s identity, attentional focus, and emotional state. Humans process this wealth of socially relevant information in a network of face-selective regions distributed across the brain. In this chapter I review studies that have used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to study the cognitive operations and functional connections of this network. TMS has disrupted brain areas contributing to the processing of facial identity, facial expression, eye-gaze direction, head direction, trustworthiness and the auditory-visual integration of speech. TMS can also be combined with neuroimaging techniques to study how transient focal disruption of a targeted face area impacts connections across the extended face network. I also review chronometric TMS studies that have established when faces are processed across different brain areas down to a millisecond resolution.</p>

Non-invasive stimulation of the social brain: the methodological challenges

“…We specifically highlight the work elucidating the role of the occipital face area (OFA) in facial identity processing as a clear example of how using TMS can extend and support previous findings in facial identity research. Whilst beyond the scope of the current review, we also acknowledge the extensive body of work using NIBS to investigate processing of facial expressions (see Atkinson and Adolphs, 2011 ; Pitcher, 2019 for reviews in this area).…”

“…This model is supported by a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), lesion and animal work ( Atkinson and Adolphs, 2011 ; Rossion, 2014 ), but has been extended and tested through the use of NIBS methods ( Atkinson and Adolphs, 2011 ; Pitcher et al. , 2011 ; Pitcher, 2019 ). Work by Pitcher et al.…”