The neural representation of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the distributed system for face perception

Castello, Matteo Visconti di Oleggio; Halchenko, Yaroslav O.; Guntupalli, J. Swaroop; Gors, Jason; Gobbini, M. Ida

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-12559-1

Cited by 90 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…The personal relevance of the faces had a far more substantial impact on ERP and fMRI measures than their emotional content. In accordance with previous research, our unimodal fMRI analyses showed that personal relevance increased activation in the core and extended face processing network (Gobbini & Haxby, 2007;Ramon & Gobbini, 2018;Visconti Di Oleggio Castello et al, 2017), including fusiform gyrus, posterior STS and inferior frontal gyrus [core network], and in the precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex as parts of the extended face network.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Neuroimaging research suggests that this advantage involves a core face processing network comprised of occipital face area (OFA), fusiform face area (FFA), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), anterior STS, and inferior frontal gyrus, as well as an extended face processing network, which includes brain regions involved in episodic memories (precuneous, anterior temporal cortex), person knowledge (temporoparietal junction (TPJ), medial prefrontal cortex) and emotion processing (amygdala, insula); (Gobbini & Haxby, 2007;Natu & O'Toole, 2011). The extended network shows stronger activation for familiar compared to unfamiliar faces (Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000;Natu & O'Toole, 2011;Visconti Di Oleggio Castello, Halchenko, Guntupalli, Gors, & Gobbini, 2017), which might be the neural basis for behavioural findings of more robust face detection and recognition for familiar faces (Ramon & Gobbini, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

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confidence: 99%

Rapid neural representations of personally relevant faces

Bayer

Berhe

Dziobek

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…This is particularly true for the pars opercularis of the IFG (Brodmann area 44), which has been proposed as the human homolog of the monkey ventral premotor area F5 (Petrides, 2005;Petrides & Pandya, 1994). We found activation in response to dynamic facial expressions in this region, which did not overlap with the more anteroventral part of the IFG that is typically activated in emotional expression labeling (e.g., Hariri et al, 2000) or person identification (e.g., Visconti di Oleggio Castello et al, 2017). There is a great deal of evidence that the cerebellum is also involved in motor processing (Manto et al, 2012) and some studies suggested its involvement in mirror neuron functioning (e.g., Leslie et al, 2004; for a review, see Van Overwalle et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…22.4 ± 5.6 years; age of the males: 22.6 ± 3.3 years). A previous methodological study indicated that a total of 45 participants is recommended to achieve a statistical power of 80% with a standard effect size (Cohen's d = 1) using a voxel-wise whole-brain correction (Wager et al, 2009). The participants were administered the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (Sheehan et al 1998), a short structured diagnostic interview, by a psychiatrist or psychologist.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Widespread and lateralized social brain activity for processing dynamic facial expressions

Sato

Kochiyama²,

Uono

et al. 2019

Human Brain Mapping

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Dynamic facial expressions of emotions constitute natural and powerful means of social communication in daily life. A number of previous neuroimaging studies have explored the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of dynamic facial expressions, and indicated the activation of certain social brain regions (e.g., the amygdala) during such tasks. However, the activated brain regions were inconsistent across studies, and their laterality was rarely evaluated. To investigate these issues, we measured brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a relatively large sample (n = 51) during the observation of dynamic facial expressions of anger and happiness and their corresponding dynamic mosaic images. The observation of dynamic facial expressions, compared with dynamic mosaics, elicited stronger activity in the bilateral posterior cortices, including the inferior occipital gyri, fusiform gyri, and superior temporal sulci. The dynamic facial expressions also activated bilateral limbic regions, including the amygdalae and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, more strongly versus mosaics. In the same manner, activation was found in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left cerebellum. Laterality analyses comparing original and flipped images revealed right hemispheric dominance in the superior temporal sulcus and IFG and left hemispheric dominance in the cerebellum. These results indicated that the neural mechanisms underlying processing of dynamic facial expressions include widespread social brain regions associated with perceptual, emotional, and motor functions, and include a clearly lateralized (right cortical and left cerebellar) network like that involved in language processing.

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“…In particular, is the familiarity enhancement effect due to tuning of bottom-up perceptual filters, or to top-down feedback 8,9,11 ? Previous studies could not address this question as they used only unfamiliar face images [22][23][24] , indirect analyses of steady-state visual evoked responses 26 or functional magnetic resonance imaging with low temporal resolution [27][28][29][30][31] . Our finding that identity and gender information are significantly enhanced for familiar faces, very early on in processing, and virtually as early as this information becomes available, provides a possible neural mechanism for the strong behavioral enhancement in perception of familiar versus unfamiliar faces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How face perception unfolds over time

Dobs

Işık

Pantazis

et al. 2018

Preprint

114

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Within a fraction of a second of viewing a face, we have already determined its gender, age and identity. A full understanding of this remarkable feat will require a characterization of the computational steps it entails, along with the representations extracted at each. Here we used magnetencephalography to ask which properties of a face are extracted when, and how early in processing these computations are affected by face familiarity. Subjects viewed images of familiar and unfamiliar faces varying orthogonally in gender and age. Using representational similarity analysis, we found that gender and age information emerged significantly earlier than identity information, followed by a late signature of familiarity. Importantly, gender and identity representations were enhanced for familiar faces early during processing. These findings start to reveal the sequence of processing steps entailed in face perception in humans, and suggest that early stages of face processing are tuned to familiar face features.

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The neural representation of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the distributed system for face perception

Cited by 90 publications

References 82 publications

Rapid neural representations of personally relevant faces

Rapid neural representations of personally relevant faces

Widespread and lateralized social brain activity for processing dynamic facial expressions

How face perception unfolds over time

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