Back

Face neurons in human visual cortex

Decramer, T.; Premereur, E.; Zhu, Q.; Van Paesschen, W.; van Loon, J.; Vanduffel, W.; Taubert, J.; Janssen, P.; Theys, T.

2020-10-09 neuroscience
10.1101/2020.10.09.328609 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The exquisite capacity of primates to detect and recognize faces is crucial for social interactions. Although disentangling the neural basis of human face recognition remains a key goal in neuroscience, direct evidence at the single-neuron level is virtually nonexistent. We recorded from face-selective neurons in human visual cortex, in a region characterized by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activations for faces compared to objects (i.e. the occipital face area, OFA). The majority of visually responsive neurons in this fMRI activation showed strong selectivity at short latencies for faces compared to objects. Feature scrambled faces and face-like objects could also drive these neurons, suggesting that the OFA is not tightly-tuned to the visual attributes that typically define whole human faces. These single-cell recordings within the human face processing system provide vital experimental evidence linking previous imaging studies in humans and invasive studies in animal models.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.