scholarly journals Awake fMRI reveals a specialized region in dog temporal cortex for face processing

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D Dilks ◽  
Peter Cook ◽  
Samuel K Weiller ◽  
Helen P Berns ◽  
Mark H Spivak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Processing ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Face Selectivity ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Specialized Region ◽  
Human Faces

Recent behavioral evidence suggests that dogs, like humans and monkeys, are capable of visual face recognition. But do dogs also exhibit specialized cortical face regions similar to humans and monkeys? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in six dogs trained to remain motionless during scanning without restraint or sedation, we found a region in the canine temporal lobe that responded significantly more to movies of human faces than to movies of everyday objects. Next, using a new stimulus set to investigate face selectivity in this predefined candidate dog face area, we found that this region responded similarly to images of human faces and dog faces, yet significantly more to both human and dog faces than to images of objects. Such face selectivity was not found in dog primary visual cortex. Taken together, these findings: 1) provide the first evidence for a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs, which cannot be explained by simple low-level visual feature extraction; 2) reveal that neural machinery dedicated to face processing is not unique to primates; and 3) may help explain dogs’ exquisite sensitivity to human social cues.

scholarly journals Awake fMRI reveals a specialized region in dog temporal cortex for face processing

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D Dilks ◽  
Peter Cook ◽  
Samuel K Weiller ◽  
Helen P Berns ◽  
Mark H Spivak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Processing ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Face Selectivity ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Specialized Region ◽  
Human Faces

Recent behavioral evidence suggests that dogs, like humans and monkeys, are capable of visual face recognition. But do dogs also exhibit specialized cortical face regions similar to humans and monkeys? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in six dogs trained to remain motionless during scanning without restraint or sedation, we found a region in the canine temporal lobe that responded significantly more to movies of human faces than to movies of everyday objects. Next, using a new stimulus set to investigate face selectivity in this predefined candidate dog face area, we found that this region responded similarly to images of human faces and dog faces, yet significantly more to both human and dog faces than to images of objects. Such face selectivity was not found in dog primary visual cortex. Taken together, these findings: 1) provide the first evidence for a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs, which cannot be explained by simple low-level visual feature extraction; 2) reveal that neural machinery dedicated to face processing is not unique to primates; and 3) may help explain dogs’ exquisite sensitivity to human social cues.

scholarly journals Decoding Human Emotional Faces in the Dog’s Brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúl Hernández-Pérez ◽  
Luis Concha ◽  
Laura V. Cuaya
Keyword(s):  
Support Vector Machine Classifier ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Time Courses ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
Brain Fmri

AbstractDogs can interpret emotional human faces (especially the ones expressing happiness), yet the cerebral correlates of this process are unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we studied eight awake and unrestrained dogs. In Experiment 1 dogs observed happy and neutral human faces, and found increased brain activity when viewing happy human faces in temporal cortex and caudate. In Experiment 2 the dogs were presented with human faces expressing happiness, anger, fear, or sadness. Using the resulting cluster from Experiment 1 we trained a linear support vector machine classifier to discriminate between pairs of emotions and found that it could only discriminate between happiness and the other emotions. Finally, evaluation of the whole-brain fMRI time courses through a similar classifier allowed us to predict the emotion being observed by the dogs. Our results show that human emotions are specifically represented in dogs’ brains, highlighting their importance for inter-species communication.

Too Many Trees to See the Forest: Performance, Event-related Potential, and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Manifestations of Integrative Congenital Prosopagnosia

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shlomo Bentin ◽  
Joseph M. DeGutis ◽  
Mark D'Esposito ◽  
Lynn C. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Congenital Prosopagnosia ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Face Selectivity

Neuropsychological, event-related potential (ERP), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods were combined to provide a comprehensive description of performance and neurobiological profiles for K.W., a case of congenital prosopagnosia. We demonstrate that K.W.'s visual perception is characterized by almost unprecedented inability to identify faces, a large bias toward local features, and an extreme deficit in global/configural processing that is not confined to faces. This pattern could be appropriately labeled congenital integrative prosopagnosia, and accounts for some, albeit not all, cases of face recognition impairments without identifiable brain lesions. Absence of face selectivity is evident in both biological markers of face processing, fMRI (the fusiform face area [FFA]), and ERPs (N170). Nevertheless, these two neural signatures probably manifest different perceptual mechanisms. Whereas the N170 is triggered by the occurrence of physiognomic stimuli in the visual field, the deficient face-selective fMRI activation in the caudal brain correlates with the severity of global processing deficits. This correlation suggests that the FFA might be associated with global/configural computation, a crucial part of face identification.

Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Human Social Attention

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 1001-1012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin J. Palmer ◽  
Colin W. G. Clifford
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Input ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
Sensory Cues ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Specific Direction ◽  
Cross Adaptation ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
Perceptual Phenomenon

Face pareidolia is the phenomenon of seeing facelike structures in everyday objects. Here, we tested the hypothesis that face pareidolia, rather than being limited to a cognitive or mnemonic association, reflects the activation of visual mechanisms that typically process human faces. We focused on sensory cues to social attention, which engage cell populations in temporal cortex that are susceptible to habituation effects. Repeated exposure to “pareidolia faces” that appear to have a specific direction of attention causes a systematic bias in the perception of where human faces are looking, indicating that overlapping sensory mechanisms are recruited when we view human faces and when we experience face pareidolia. These cross-adaptation effects are significantly reduced when pareidolia is abolished by removing facelike features from the objects. These results indicate that face pareidolia is essentially a perceptual phenomenon, occurring when sensory input is processed by visual mechanisms that have evolved to extract specific social content from human faces.

High-resolution Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reveals Configural Processing of Cars in Right Anterior Fusiform Face Area of Car Experts

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 973-984 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Ross ◽  
Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau ◽  
Thomas J. Palmeri ◽  
JieDong Zhang ◽  
Yaoda Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Fusiform Face Area ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Face Area ◽  
Neural Selectivity

Visual object expertise correlates with neural selectivity in the fusiform face area (FFA). Although behavioral studies suggest that visual expertise is associated with increased use of holistic and configural information, little is known about the nature of the supporting neural representations. Using high-resolution 7-T functional magnetic resonance imaging, we recorded the multivoxel activation patterns elicited by whole cars, configurally disrupted cars, and car parts in individuals with a wide range of car expertise. A probabilistic support vector machine classifier was trained to differentiate activation patterns elicited by whole car images from activation patterns elicited by misconfigured car images. The classifier was then used to classify new combined activation patterns that were created by averaging activation patterns elicited by individually presented top and bottom car parts. In line with the idea that the configuration of parts is critical to expert visual perception, car expertise was negatively associated with the probability of a combined activation pattern being classified as a whole car in the right anterior FFA, a region critical to vision for categories of expertise. Thus, just as found for faces in normal observers, the neural representation of cars in right anterior FFA is more holistic for car experts than car novices, consistent with common mechanisms of neural selectivity for faces and other objects of expertise in this area.

scholarly journals Dissociating Explicit and Implicit Category Knowledge with fMRI

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 574-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Reber ◽  
Darren R. Gitelman ◽  
Todd B. Parrish ◽  
M. Marsel Mesulam
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Inferior Temporal Cortex ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Intentional Learning ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Category Knowledge ◽  
Increased Activity

Neuroimaging of healthy volunteers identified separate neural systems supporting the expression of category knowledge depending on whether the learning mode was intentional or incidental. The same visual category was learned either intentionally or implicitly by two separate groups of participants. During a categorization test, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activity evoked by category members and nonmembers. After implicit learning, when participants had learned the category incidentally, decreased occipital activity was observed for novel categorical stimuli compared with noncategorical stimuli. In contrast, after intentional learning, novel categorical stimuli evoked increased activity in the hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex, left inferior temporal cortex, precuneus, and posterior cingulate. Even though the categorization test was identical in the two conditions, the differences in brain activity indicate differing representations of category knowledge depending on whether the category had been learned intentionally or implicitly.

scholarly journals Cannabis affects people differently: inter-subject variation in the psychotogenic effects of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with healthy volunteers

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1255-1267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Atakan ◽  
S. Bhattacharyya ◽  
P. Allen ◽  
R. Martín-Santos ◽  
J. A. Crippa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Healthy Volunteers ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Psychotic Symptoms ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Middle Temporal ◽  
The Right

BackgroundCannabis can induce transient psychotic symptoms, but not all users experience these adverse effects. We compared the neural response to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in healthy volunteers in whom the drug did or did not induce acute psychotic symptoms.MethodIn a double-blind, placebo-controlled, pseudorandomized design, 21 healthy men with minimal experience of cannabis were given either 10 mg THC or placebo, orally. Behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging measures were then recorded whilst they performed a go/no-go task.ResultsThe sample was subdivided on the basis of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale positive score following administration of THC into transiently psychotic (TP; n = 11) and non-psychotic (NP; n = 10) groups. During the THC condition, TP subjects made more frequent inhibition errors than the NP group and showed differential activation relative to the NP group in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left and right middle temporal gyri and in the right cerebellum. In these regions, THC had opposite effects on activation relative to placebo in the two groups. The TP group also showed less activation than the NP group in the right middle temporal gyrus and cerebellum, independent of the effects of THC.ConclusionsIn this first demonstration of inter-subject variability in sensitivity to the psychotogenic effects of THC, we found that the presence of acute psychotic symptoms was associated with a differential effect of THC on activation in the ventral and medial temporal cortex and cerebellum, suggesting that these regions mediate the effects of the drug on psychotic symptoms.

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