The occipital face area is causally involved in the formation of identity-specific face representations

Abstract

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and neuroimaging studies suggest a role of the right occipital face area (rOFA) in early facial feature processing. However, the degree to which rOFA is necessary for the encoding of facial identity has been less clear. Here we used a state-dependent TMS paradigm, where stimulation preferentially facilitates attributes encoded by less active neural populations, to investigate the role of the rOFA in face perception and specifically in image-independent identity processing. Participants performed a familiarity decision task for famous and unknown target faces, preceded by brief (200 ms) or longer (3500 ms) exposures to primes which were either an image of a different identity (DiffID), another image of the same identity (SameID), the same image (SameIMG), or a Fourier-randomized noise pattern (NOISE) while either the rOFA or the vertex as control was stimulated by single-pulse TMS. Strikingly, TMS to the rOFA eliminated the advantage of SameID over DiffID condition, thereby disrupting identity-specific priming, while leaving image-specific priming (better performance for SameIMG vs. SameID) unaffected. Our results suggest that the role of rOFA is not limited to low-level feature processing, and emphasize its role in image-independent facial identity processing and the formation of identity-specific memory traces.

The right hemispheric dominance for face perception in preschool children depends on the visual discrimination level

“…As presented in the introduction, the right hemispheric dominance for individual face discrimination but not for generic face categorization in preschool children is in line with a variety of observations made in adults, showing either enhanced or exclusive right lateralization when individuating faces as compared to the categorization of faces as faces. This is the case for EEG measures, either obtained in standard ERP paradigms (e.g., Jacques & Rossion, ) or during FPVS (Liu‐Shuang et al, ; Rossion et al, ) and, most importantly, when considering the interruption of function either following brain damage (e.g., Rossion et al, ), transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right lateral occipital cortex (Ambrus et al, ; Pitcher et al, ; Solomon‐Harris et al, ) or intracranial stimulation in the right inferior occipital gyrus and fusiform gyrus (Chong et al, ; Jonas et al, , ; Keller et al, ).…”

“…Brain‐damaged patients with prosopagnosia, for instance, cannot individuate familiar or unfamiliar faces but can still recognize a face as a face (e.g., Liu‐Shuang, Torfs, & Rossion, ; Rossion, Dricot, Goebel, & Busigny, ; Young, De Haan, & Newcombe, ). Likewise, transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right lateral occipital cortex impairs individuation of faces (Ambrus, Dotzer, Schweinberger, & Kovács, ; Pitcher, Walsh, Yovel, & Duchaine, ; Solomon‐Harris, Mullin, & Steeves, ) but not the categorization of a face as a face (Solomon‐Harris et al, ). In the same vein, transient failures to individuate faces have been observed following intracranial stimulation in the right but not the left face‐selective regions (Jonas et al, , ), while difficulties at categorizing visual stimuli as faces can be observed following stimulation in either the left or right hemisphere face‐selective regions (Chong et al, ; Keller et al, ).…”

Integrating predictive frameworks and cognitive models of face perception

“…These considerations are based on two different caveats. First, many areas that were originally thought to be involved only in low-level processing have in fact been shown to be necessary for higher-level tasks such as person recognition (Ambrus, Dotzer, Schweinberger, & Kovács, 2017;Davies-Thompson & Andrews, 2012;Gschwind, Pourtois, Schwartz, Van De Ville, & Vuilleumier, 2012;Rossion, 2008Rossion, , 2014. Second, many areas of the extended part of the Bface-network^are not face-specific but are involved in general cognitive mechanisms such as attention, emotion processing, or executive control.…”

Face Processing and TMS

“…Subsequent studies demonstrated that TMS delivered over the OFA impaired the priming of famous faces (Ambrus et al, 2017a) and the priming of names with famous faces (Ambrus et al, 2019). Taken together these studies demonstrate that the lowlevel face processing that occurs in the OFA causally contributes to more complex face computations in higher face-selective areas.…”

“…The most compelling TMS evidence that the OFA is causally involved in processing facial identity comes from three recent studies from Ambrus and colleagues (Ambrus et al, 2017b, Ambrus et al, 2017a, Ambrus et al, 2019. These studies elegantly investigated the feedforward and feedback connections thought to exist between the OFA and the higher face processing areas process the invariant physical representations of unique facial identities (e.g.…”