Social Origins of Cortical Face Areas

Powell, Lindsey J.; Kosakowski, Heather L.; Saxe, Rebecca

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2018.06.009

Cited by 69 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 115 publications

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“…In fact, recent work using fMRI with infants shows a similar degree of social specificity as infant mPFC involvement is only seen in response to dynamic faces but not to other nonsocial visual scenes ( Deen et al. 2017 , Powell et al. 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Impression Formation in the Human Infant Brain

Krol

Großmann

2020

Cerebral Cortex Communications

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Forming an impression of another person is an essential aspect of human social cognition linked to medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function in adults. The current study examined the neurodevelopmental origins of impression formation by testing the hypothesis that infants rely on processes localized in mPFC when forming impressions about individuals who appear friendly or threatening. Infants’ brain responses were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while watching four different face identities displaying either smiles or frowns directed toward or away from them (N = 77). This was followed by a looking preference test for these face identities (now displaying a neutral expression) using eyetracking. Our results show that infants’ mPFC responses distinguish between smiling and frowning faces when directed at them and that these responses predicted their subsequent person preferences. This suggests that the mPFC is involved in impression formation in human infants, attesting to the early ontogenetic emergence of brain systems supporting person perception and adaptive behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Impression Formation in the Human Infant Brain

Krol

Großmann

2020

Cerebral Cortex Communications

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“…de Beeck et al, 2019;Powell et al, 2018). The previously mentioned preferential response to face-related sounds in the fusiform of blind subjects (van denHurk et al, 2017) provides some evidence for this hypothesis.…”

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confidence: 82%

“…is not significant.If it is neither early-developing retinotopic nor feature-based proto-mapsSrihasam et al, 2012) that specify the cortical locus of face-selectivity in blind participants, what does? In sighted subjects, category-selective regions in the ventral visual pathway serve not just to analyze visual information, but to extract the very different representations that serve as inputs to higher-level regions engaged in social cognition, visually-guided action, and navigation(Kim et al, 2017;Op de Beeck et al, 2019;Peelen and Downing, 2017;Powell et al, 2018). Perhaps it is their interaction with these higher-level cortical regions that drives the development of face-selectivity in this…”

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confidence: 99%

Visual Experience is not Necessary for the Development of Face Selectivity in the Lateral Fusiform Gyrus

Murty

Teng

Beeler

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Here we show robust face-selectivity in the lateral fusiform gyrus of congenitally blind participants during haptic exploration of 3D-printed stimuli, indicating that neither visual experience, nor fovea-biased input, nor visual expertise is necessary for face-selectivity to arise in its characteristic location. Similar resting fMRI correlation fingerprints in individual blind and sighted participants suggest a role for long-range connectivity in the specification of the cortical locus of face-selectivity.

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“…Shared EEG-fMRI representations were first apparent as early as 100 ms after stimulus onset not only in the visual cortex, but also in the ventromedial and medial prefrontal cortex, regions involved in value encoding and self-referential processing (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015;Northoff et al, 2006). Interestingly, the medial prefrontal cortex with its ability to encode social value and reward, was recently also discussed as a guiding structure in infants' cortical face specialisation (Powell, Kosakowski, & Saxe, 2018). Further early representations were observed in regions linked to multimodal sensory integration and theory of mind (TPJ) (Patel, Sestieri, & Corbetta, 2019), and episodic and autobiographical memory (posterior cingulate cortex) (Leech & Sharp, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid neural representations of personally relevant faces

Bayer

Berhe

Dziobek

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Faces are a primary source of social information, but little is known about the sequence of neural processes that extract information from highly personally relevant faces, such as those of our loved ones. We applied representational similarity analyses to EEG-fMRI measurement of neural responses to faces of personal relevance to participants -their romantic partner and a friend -compared to a stranger. Faces expressed fear, happiness or no emotion. Shared EEG-fMRI representations started 100ms after stimulus onset not only in visual cortex, but also regions involved in social cognition, value representation and autobiographical memory, including ventromedial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction and posterior cingulate. Representations in fusiform gyrus, amygdala, insular cortex and N. accumbens were evident after 200 ms. Representations related to romantic love emerged after 400ms in subcortical brain regions associated with reward. The results point to the prioritized processing of personal relevance with rapid and extensive cortical representation.3 Faces are arguably the most important social and emotional stimuli we encounter in daily life. They tell us an enormous amount about our fellow humans, including whether they are strangers, friends, enemies, or loved ones, how old they are, how healthy they are, and how they are feeling, both generally, as well as towards us specifically. So important are faces to us, that we appear to be experts at processing them, and have developed specialised neural circuitry to do so (Kanwisher, 2000). Based on a large body of behavioural and neuroimaging research, theories of how different types of face information are extracted from the visual stream have been proposed, with separate processing pathways being suggested for transient (e.g. emotion) and stable (e.g. identity) aspects of faces (Bruce & Young, 1986). Yet testing these models is hampered by the lack of temporal resolution needed to delineate several rapidly occurring processing stages, and the almost exclusive focus on faces that carry little or no personal relevance to the observer.

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Social Origins of Cortical Face Areas

Cited by 69 publications

References 115 publications

Impression Formation in the Human Infant Brain

Impression Formation in the Human Infant Brain

Visual Experience is not Necessary for the Development of Face Selectivity in the Lateral Fusiform Gyrus

Rapid neural representations of personally relevant faces

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