Abstract
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies on humans have shown a cortical area, the fusiform face area, that is specialized for face processing. An important question is how faces are represented within this area. This study provides direct evidence for a representation in which individual faces are encoded by their direction (facial identity) and distance (distinctiveness) from a prototypical (mean) face. When facial geometry (head shape, hair line, internal feature size and placement) was varied, the fMRI signal increased with increasing distance from the mean face. Furthermore, adaptation of the fMRI signal showed that the same neural population responds to faces falling along single identity axes within this space.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Desimone, R. Face-selective cells in the temporal cortex of monkeys. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 3, 1–8 (1991).
Gross, C.G. Representation of visual-stimuli in inferior temporal cortex. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 335, 3–10 (1992).
Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J. & Chun, M.M. The fusiform face area: A module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J. Neurosci. 17, 4302–4311 (1997).
Grill-Spector, K., Knouf, N. & Kanwisher, N. The fusiform face area subserves face perception, not generic within-category identification. Nat. Neurosci. 7, 555–562 (2004).
Valentine, T. A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. A 43, 161–204 (1991).
Leopold, D.A., O'Toole, A.J., Vetter, T. & Blanz, V. Prototype-referenced shape encoding revealed by high-level after effects. Nat. Neurosci. 4, 89–94 (2001).
Tanaka, J., Giles, M., Kremen, S. & Simon, V. Mapping attractor fields in face space: the atypicality bias in face recognition. Cognition 68, 199–220 (1998).
Wilson, H.R., Loffler, G. & Wilkinson, F. Synthetic faces, face cubes, and the geometry of face space. Vision Res. 42, 2909–2923 (2002).
Grill-Spector, K. & Malach, R. fMR-adaptation: a tool for studying the functional properties of human cortical neurons. Acta Psychol. (Amst.) 107, 293–321 (2001).
McCarthy, G., Puce, A., Belger, A. & Allison, T. Electrophysiological studies of human face perception. II: Response properties of face-specific potentials generated in occipitotemporal cortex. Cereb. Cortex 9, 431–444 (1999).
Naka, K.I. & Rushton, W.A. S-potentials from colour units in the retina of fish (Cyprinidae). J. Physiol. 185, 536–555 (1966).
Sclar, G., Maunsell, J.R. & Lennie, P. Coding of image contrast in central visual pathways of the macaque monkey. Vision Res. 30, 1–10 (1990).
Boynton, G.M., Demb, J.B., Glover, G.H. & Heeger, D.J. Neuronal basis of contrast discrimination. Vision Res. 39, 257–269 (1999).
Sheth, S.A. et al. Linear and nonlinear relationships between neuronal activity, oxygen metabolism, and hemodynamic responses. Neuron 42, 347–355 (2004).
Heeger, D.J. Normalization of cell responses in cat striate cortex. Vis. Neurosci. 9, 181–197 (1992).
Hubel, D.H. & Wiesel, T.N. Receptive fields and functional architecture of the monkey striate cortex. J. Physiol. (Lond.) 195, 215–243 (1968).
Albrecht, D.G. & Hamilton, D.B. Striate cortex of monkey and cat: contrast response functions. J. Neurophysiol. 48, 217–237 (1982).
Bruce, V., Doyle, T., Dench, N. & Burton, M. Remembering facial configurations. Cognition 38, 109–144 (1991).
Logothetis, N.K., Pauls, J., Augath, M., Trinath, T. & Oeltermann, A. Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal. Nature 412, 150–157 (2001).
Gauthier, I., Tarr, M.J., Anderson, A.W., Skudlarski, P. & Gore, J.C. Activation of the middle fusiform 'face area' increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nat. Neurosci. 2, 568–573 (1999).
Duchaine, B.C., Dingle, K., Butterworth, E. & Nakayama, K. Normal greeble learning in a severe case of developmental prosopagnosia. Neuron 43, 469–473 (2004).
Kayaert, G., Biederman, I. & Vogels, R. Shape tuning in macaque inferior temporal cortex. J. Neurosci. 23, 3016–3027 (2003).
Bruce, V. & Young, A. In the Eye of the Beholder: the Science of Face Perception (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).
Nasanen, R. Spatial frequency bandwidth used in the recognition of facial images. Vision Res. 39, 3824–3833 (1999).
Gold, J., Bennett, P.J. & Sekuler, A.B. Identification of band-pass filtered letters and faces by human and ideal observers. Vision Res. 39, 3537–3560 (1999).
Acknowledgements
This research was supported in part by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant GR/T27303/01to G.L., US National Institutes of Health grant EY002158 to H.R.W. and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant OP0007551 to F.W. We are grateful to G. Gordon for sharing her thoughts on several earlier versions of this manuscript and H. Goltz for valuable advice.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Loffler, G., Yourganov, G., Wilkinson, F. et al. fMRI evidence for the neural representation of faces. Nat Neurosci 8, 1386–1391 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1538
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1538
This article is cited by
-
Neural representations of own-voice in the human auditory cortex
Scientific Reports (2021)
-
Distinct Effects of Social Stress on Working Memory in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Neuroscience Bulletin (2021)
-
A machine learning approach to predict perceptual decisions: an insight into face pareidolia
Brain Informatics (2019)
-
Fast periodic stimulation (FPS): a highly effective approach in fMRI brain mapping
Brain Structure and Function (2018)
-
Present and past selves: a steady-state visual evoked potentials approach to self-face processing
Scientific Reports (2017)