title: Single-cell responses to face adaptation in the human medial temporal lobe.
abstract: We used a face adaptation paradigm to bias the perception of ambiguous images of faces and study how single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) respond to the same images eliciting different percepts. The ambiguous images were morphs between the faces of two familiar individuals, chosen because at least one MTL neuron responded selectively to one but not to the other face. We found that the firing of MTL neurons closely followed the subjects' perceptual decisions--i.e., recognizing one person or the other. In most cases, the response to the ambiguous images was similar to the one obtained when showing the pictures without morphing. Altogether, these results show that many neurons in the medial temporal lobe signal the subjects' perceptual decisions rather than the visual features of the stimulus.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester, 9 Salisbury Rd, Leicester, LE1 7QR, UK. Electronic address: rqqg1@le.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Quian Quiroga
authors.affiliation: Intitute of Neurology, University College London, Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK; Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kraskov
authors.affiliation: Department of Epileptology, University of Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str. 25, 53105 Bonn, Germany; Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mormann
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los Angeles, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA; Functional Neurosurgery Unit, Tel-Aviv Medical Center and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University. 6 Weizmann Street, 64239 Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Itzhak
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Fried
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA; Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, WA 98103, USA.
authors.forename: Christof
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Koch
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*