What makes faces special?
What may be special about faces, compared to non-face objects, is that their neural representation may be fundamentally spatial, e.g., Gabor-like. Subjects matched a sequence of two filtered images, each containing every other combination of spatial frequency and orientation, of faces or non-face 3D blobs, judging whether the person or blob was the same or different. On a match trial, the images were either identical or complementary (containing the remaining spatial frequency and orientation content). Relative to an identical pair of images, a complementary pair of faces, but not blobs, reduced matching accuracy and released fMRI adaptation in the fusiform face area.
Yue
Xiaomin
X
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA. xyue@usc.edu
Tjan
Bosco S
BS
Biederman
Irving
I
D000328:Adult; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013028:Space Perception