Abstract
While brain imaging studies emphasized the category selectivity of face-related areas, the underlying mechanisms of our remarkable ability to discriminate between different faces are less understood. Here, we recorded intracranial local field potentials from face-related areas in patients presented with images of faces and objects. A highly significant exemplar tuning within the category of faces was observed in high-Gamma (80-150 Hz) responses. The robustness of this effect was supported by single-trial decoding of face exemplars using a minimal (n = 5) training set. Importantly, exemplar tuning reflected the psychophysical distance between faces but not their low-level features. Our results reveal a neuronal substrate for the establishment of perceptual distance among faces in the human brain. They further imply that face neurons are anatomically grouped according to well-defined functional principles, such as perceptual similarity.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1879-1893 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Cerebral Cortex |
Volume | 24 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 2014 |
Keywords
- ECoG
- face perception
- high-gamma
- perceptual similarity
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience