Neuroscience: Choosing Face

The role of particular neurons in a region of monkeys’ brains known to be important for object recognition is more clearly established by a study appearing online in Nature this week. The research shows that artificially activating these nerve cells biases the monkey’s choices in face categorization tasks.

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VOL.442 NO.7101 DATED 27 JULY 2006

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Neuroscience: Choosing Face

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[1] Neuroscience: Choosing Face (AOP)

DOI: 10.1038/nature04982

***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 26 July at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time (which is also when the embargo lifts) as part of our AOP (ahead of print) programme. Although we have included it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 27 July, but at a later date.***

The role of particular neurons in a region of monkeys’ brains known to be important for object recognition is more clearly established by a study appearing online in Nature this week. The research shows that artificially activating these nerve cells biases the monkey’s choices in face categorization tasks.

Hossein Esteky and colleagues studied face perception in two adult monkeys (Macaca mulatta) trained to complete a task in which they had to judge whether noisy visual images, some of which were faces, belonged to “face” or “non-face” categories. The researchers electrically stimulated clusters of neurons in the inferotemporal cortex that were shown to respond selectively to faces, with the result that the decisions made by the monkeys were biased towards the face category. The authors report that this effect depended upon the size of the brain area stimulated and the exact time at which stimulation occurred.

The precise role of face-selective neurons in behaviour has been under debate. The authors suggest that their research, at very high spatial resolution, establishes a causal link between the activity of face-selective neurons and face perception.

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Published: 26 Jul 2006

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