title: Neural representations of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the anterior inferior temporal cortex of monkeys.
abstract: To investigate the neural representations of faces in primates, particularly in relation to their personal familiarity or unfamiliarity, neuronal activities were chronically recorded from the ventral portion of the anterior inferior temporal cortex (AITv) of macaque monkeys during the performance of a facial identification task using either personally familiar or unfamiliar faces as stimuli. By calculating the correlation coefficients between neuronal responses to the faces for all possible pairs of faces given in the task and then using the coefficients as neuronal population-based similarity measures between the faces in pairs, we analyzed the similarity/dissimilarity relationship between the faces, which were potentially represented by the activities of a population of the face-responsive neurons recorded in the area AITv. The results showed that, for personally familiar faces, different identities were represented by different patterns of activities of the population of AITv neurons irrespective of the view (e.g., front, 90° left, etc.), while different views were not represented independently of their facial identities, which was consistent with our previous report. In the case of personally unfamiliar faces, the faces possessing different identities but presented in the same frontal view were represented as similar, which contrasts with the results for personally familiar faces. These results, taken together, outline the neuronal representations of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the AITv neuronal population.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan. se@med.u-toyama.ac.jp
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eifuku
authors.forename: Wania C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: De Souza
authors.forename: Ryuzaburo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nakata
authors.forename: Taketoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ono
authors.forename: Ryoi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tamura
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D000882:Haplorhini / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D012372:ROC Curve; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*