A specialized face-processing model inspired by the organization of monkey face patches explains several face-specific phenomena observed in humans.
Converging reports indicate that face images are processed through specialized neural networks in the brain -i.e. face patches in monkeys and the fusiform face area (FFA) in humans. These studies were designed to find out how faces are processed in visual system compared to other objects. Yet, the underlying mechanism of face processing is not completely revealed. Here, we show that a hierarchical computational model, inspired by electrophysiological evidence on face processing in primates, is able to generate representational properties similar to those observed in monkey face patches (posterior, middle and anterior patches). Since the most important goal of sensory neuroscience is linking the neural responses with behavioral outputs, we test whether the proposed model, which is designed to account for neural responses in monkey face patches, is also able to predict well-documented behavioral face phenomena observed in humans. We show that the proposed model satisfies several cognitive face effects such as: composite face effect and the idea of canonical face views. Our model provides insights about the underlying computations that transfer visual information from posterior to anterior face patches.
School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran.
Amirhossein
A
Farzmahdi
School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran.
Karim
K
Rajaei
Department of Physiology, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Masoud
M
Ghodrati
Department of Computer Engineering, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran.|School of Cognitive Sciences (SCS), Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran.
Reza
R
Ebrahimpour
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Seyed-Mahdi
SM
Khaligh-Razavi
D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D000882:Haplorhini; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010775:Photic Stimulation