Neural Correlates of Person Recognition

Abstract

Rapidly identifying known individuals is an essential skill in human society. To elucidate the neural basis of this skill, we monitored brain activity while experimental participants demonstrated their ability to recognize people on the basis of viewing their faces. Each participant first memorized the faces of 20 individuals who were not known to the participants in advance. Each face was presented along with a voice simulating the individual speaking their name and a biographical fact. Following this learning procedure, the associated verbal information could be recalled accurately in response to each face. These learned faces were subsequently viewed together with new faces in a memory task. Subjects made a yes-no recognition decision in response to each face while also covertly retrieving the person-specific information associated with each learned face. Brain activity that accompanied this retrieval of person-specific information was contrasted to that when new faces were processed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging in 10 participants showed that several brain regions were activated during blocks of learned faces, including left hippocampus, left middle temporal gyrus, left insula, and bilateral cerebellum. Recordings of event-related brain potentials in 10 other participants tracked the time course of face processing and showed that learned faces engaged neural activity responsible for person recognition 300-600 msec after face onset. Collectively, these results suggest that the visual input of a recently learned face can rapidly trigger retrieval of associated person-specific information through reactivation of distributed cortical networks linked via hippocampal connections.Memory for people requires linking together diverse sorts of information, including a person's name, physical appearance, personal characteristics, and relevant interpersonal interactions. A brief glimpse of a face can provoke the rapid retrieval of a wealth of stored information pertaining to that person. However, the computational steps required for this process of person recognition are not well understood.How is person-specific information represented in the brain, and what happens to allow that information to be retrieved? When retrieval is cued by facial input, structural analysis in the visual system is the first step. Investigations of face processing using single-unit physiology (e.g

Glucocorticoids enhance taste aversion memory via actions in the insular cortex and basolateral amygdala

“…Although most studies of the involvement of the insular cortex in memory have investigated taste aversion and taste recognition, there is some evidence that the insular cortex is also involved in memory that is not based on taste, including object recognition and inhibitory avoidance . Such findings fit well with recent evidence of two brain imaging studies suggesting an involvement of the insular cortex in human face and tactile recognition (Paller et al 2003;Reed et al 2004). As glucocorticoids are known to also influence the consolidation of other forms of recognition memory (Okuda et al 2004;Roozendaal et al 2006c), the insular cortex (and possibly perirhinal cortex) may be a general target for glucocorticoids in influencing recognition memory consolidation.…”

Insular cortex is involved in consolidation of object recognition memory

“…These findings provide compelling evidence that the IC is not engaged uniquely in the (associative) learning and recognition of taste, but that it plays a more general role in recognition memory. Such findings fit well with recent findings of two brain imaging studies suggesting an involvement of the IC in human face and tactile recognition (Paller et al 2003;Reed et al 2004), as well as with evidence that reversible or permanent lesions of the IC produce strong impairments in the consolidation of inhibitory avoidance and watermaze spatial learning Nerad et al 1996).…”

“…These findings provide compelling evidence that the IC is not engaged uniquely in the (associative) learning and recognition of taste, but that it plays a more general role in recognition memory. Such findings fit well with recent findings of two brain imaging studies suggesting an involvement of the IC in human face and tactile recognition (Paller et al 2003;Reed et al 2004), as well as with evidence that reversible or permanent lesions of the IC produce strong impairments in the consolidation of inhibitory avoidance and watermaze spatial learning Nerad et al 1996).It is well established that a network of temporal structures including the perirhinal, parahippocampal, and entorhinal cortices and the hippocampus participates in recognition memory. Our results suggest that the IC is part of this network, as it is highly involved in processing the consolidation of newly presented tastes and, as the present findings indicate, of objects.…”

“…Although most studies of the involvement of the IC in memory have investigated taste, there is some evidence that the IC is involved in memory that is not based on taste Paller et al 2003;Reed et al 2004). Converging evidence from animal and human studies suggests that a network of temporal cortical regions participates in recognition memory (Tang et al 1997;Aggleton and Brown 1999;Malkova and Mishkin 2003;Reed et al 2004).…”

Knowledge scale effects in face recognition: An electrophysiological investigation

“…In a similar study, Paller and colleagues (Paller, Gonsalves, Grabowecky, Bozic, & Yamada, 2000; see also Paller et al, 2003) observed different effects. The authors compared processing of unfamiliar faces with processing of newly learned faces that either had been associated with a name and a piece of biographical information or had been learned in isolation without any accompanying information.…”