Abstract：
How does the brain process the faces of familiar people? Neuropsychological studies have argued for an area of the temporal pole (TP) linking faces with person identities, but magnetic susceptibility artifacts in this region have hampered its study with fMRI. Using data acquisition and analysis methods optimized to overcome this artifact, we identify a familiar face response in TP, reliably observed in individual brains. This area responds strongly to visual images of familiar faces over unfamiliar faces, objects, and scenes. However, TP did not just respond to images of faces, but also to a variety of high-level social cognitive tasks, including semantic, episodic, and theory of mind tasks. The response profile of TP contrasted with a nearby region of the perirhinal cortex that responded specifically to faces, but not to social cognition tasks. TP was functionally connected with a distributed network in the association cortex associated with social cognition, while PR was functionally connected with face-preferring areas of the ventral visual cortex. This work identifies a missing link in the human face processing system that specifically processes familiar faces, and is well placed to integrate visual information about faces with higher-order conceptual information about other people. The results suggest that separate streams for person and face processing reach anterior temporal areas positioned at the top of the cortical hierarchy.
摘要：
大脑如何处理熟悉的人的面孔？神经心理学研究认为，颞极（TP）区域将面孔与人的身份联系起来，但是该区域的磁化率伪影阻碍了fMRI的研究。使用优化的数据采集和分析方法来克服这种伪影，我们在TP中识别出熟悉的面部反应，在个体大脑中可靠地观察到。这个区域对熟悉面孔的视觉图像比陌生面孔反应强烈，对象,和场景。然而,TP不仅对面部图像做出反应，而且还涉及各种高级社会认知任务，包括语义，情节,和心理任务理论。TP的响应曲线与周围皮层的附近区域形成对比，该区域专门对面部做出响应，但不是社会认知任务。TP在功能上与与社会认知相关的关联皮层中的分布式网络相连，而PR在功能上与腹侧视觉皮层的面部偏爱区域有关。这项工作确定了人脸处理系统中缺少的一个环节，该环节专门处理熟悉的面孔，并且可以很好地将有关面部的视觉信息与有关其他人的高阶概念信息集成在一起。结果表明，用于人和面部处理的单独流到达位于皮质层次结构顶部的前颞区。
