The involvement of the “fusiform face area” in processing facial expression

Ganel, Tzvi; Valyear, Kenneth F.; Goshen‐Gottstein, Yonatan; Goodale, Melvyn A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.01.012

Cited by 170 publications

(156 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

130

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Notably, these studies have reported that fusiform gyrus activation (particularly right fusiform activation) is even more robust in response to emotional faces than to neutral faces (Ganel et al 2005;Kanwisher and Yovel 2006). These findings have been used to posit a crucial role of the fusiform gyrus (and holistic facial processing) in detecting emotions from facial expressions, rather than a role restricted to facial identification (Ganel et al 2005). It seems reasonable to hypothesize that integration of facial features (e.g., eyebrows, eyes, mouth) would provide a faster and more accurate representation of an expressed emotion than individual features, since the facial features typically work synergistically to convey emotions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The fusiform gyrus has typically been associated with face processing, particularly holistic face processing. Holistic processing is considered to be fundamental to face identity recognition and facial affect recognition (Avidan et al 2011;Ganel et al 2005;Maurer et al 2002). Holistic face processing is assessed with tasks that manipulate one's ability to perceive faces as a gestalt (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the majority of studies described immediately above used neutral faces for stimuli, some studies have used emotional faces when evaluating holistic face processing (Ganel et al 2005;Kanwisher and Yovel 2006). Notably, these studies have reported that fusiform gyrus activation (particularly right fusiform activation) is even more robust in response to emotional faces than to neutral faces (Ganel et al 2005;Kanwisher and Yovel 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Holistic processing has characteristically been associated with activation in the fusiform gyrus (Kanwisher and Yovel 2006). Because the fusiform gyrus appears to have stronger responses to emotional faces than neutral faces (especially in the right hemisphere), it has been suggested that the fusiform gyrus is also implicated in the processing of facial affect, rather than a role restricted to perceptual processing of faces without emotional cues (Ganel et al 2005;Kanwisher and Yovel 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Neurobiological mechanisms associated with facial affect recognition deficits after traumatic brain injury

Neumann

McDonald

West

et al. 2015

Brain Imaging and Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Neurobiological mechanisms associated with facial affect recognition deficits after traumatic brain injury

Neumann

McDonald

West

et al. 2015

Brain Imaging and Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…These findings are consistent with the idea that the FFA is involved in identity, but not expression processing, whereas the STS shows the opposite pattern of response . However, a recent study found a higher FFA response during expression judgements than during identity judgements on faces (Ganel et al 2005), casting some doubt on the simple idea that the FFA is involved exclusively in processing face identity information.…”

Section: What Is the Nature Of The Face Representations In The Ffa?mentioning

confidence: 98%

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Kanwisher

Yovel

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,447

989

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Faces are among the most important visual stimuli we perceive, informing us not only about a person's identity, but also about their mood, sex, age and direction of gaze. The ability to extract this information within a fraction of a second of viewing a face is important for normal social interactions and has probably played a critical role in the survival of our primate ancestors. Considerable evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neurophysiological investigations supports the hypothesis that humans have specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of faces (the face-specificity hypothesis). Here, we review the literature on a region of the human brain that appears to play a key role in face perception, known as the fusiform face area (FFA).Section 1 outlines the theoretical background for much of this work. The face-specificity hypothesis falls squarely on one side of a longstanding debate in the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience concerning the extent to which the mind/brain is composed of: (i) special-purpose ('domain-specific') mechanisms, each dedicated to processing a specific kind of information (e.g. faces, according to the face-specificity hypothesis), versus (ii) general-purpose ('domain-general') mechanisms, each capable of operating on any kind of information. Face perception has long served both as one of the prime candidates of a domain-specific process and as a key target for attack by proponents of domain-general theories of brain and mind. Section 2 briefly reviews the prior literature on face perception from behaviour and neurophysiology. This work supports the face-specificity hypothesis and argues against its domain-general alternatives (the individuation hypothesis, the expertise hypothesis and others).Section 3 outlines the more recent evidence on this debate from brain imaging, focusing particularly on the FFA. We review the evidence that the FFA is selectively engaged in face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis. In §4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces. We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (e.g. the face-inversion effect).Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects. The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity. We end by speculating in §6 on some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the ques...

show abstract

Face Perception

Kanwisher¹,

Yovel²

2009

Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The involvement of the “fusiform face area” in processing facial expression

Cited by 170 publications

References 22 publications

Neurobiological mechanisms associated with facial affect recognition deficits after traumatic brain injury

Neurobiological mechanisms associated with facial affect recognition deficits after traumatic brain injury

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Face Perception

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About