Journal article

Publication year: 2018

Pages: 689-702

Journal: NeuroImage

Volume number: 172

ISSN: 1053-8119

eISSN: 1095-9572

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.02.013

Publisher: Elsevier

Abstract: 

What cortical mechanisms allow humans to easily discern the expression or identity of a face? Subjects detected changes in expression or identity of a stream of dynamic faces while we measured BOLD responses from topo-graphically and functionally defined areas throughout the visual hierarchy. Responses in dorsal areas increased during the expression task, whereas responses in ventral areas increased during the identity task, consistent with previous studies. Similar to ventral areas, early visual areas showed increased activity during the identity task. If visual responses are weighted by perceptual mechanisms according to their magnitude, these increased responses would lead to improved attentional selection of the task-appropriate facial aspect. Alternatively, increased responses could be a signature of a sensitivity enhancement mechanism that improves representations of the attended facial aspect. Consistent with the latter sensitivity enhancement mechanism, attending to expression led to enhanced decoding of exemplars of expression both in early visual and dorsal areas relative to attending identity. Similarly, decoding identity exemplars when attending to identity was improved in dorsal and ventral areas. We conclude that attending to expression or identity of dynamic faces is associated with increased selectivity in representations consistent with sensitivity enhancement.

Harvard Citation style: Dobs, K., Schultz, J., Bülthoff, I. and Gardner, J. (2018) Task-dependent enhancement of facial expression and identity representations in human cortex, NeuroImage, 172, pp. 689-702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.02.013

APA Citation style: Dobs, K., Schultz, J., Bülthoff, I., & Gardner, J. (2018). Task-dependent enhancement of facial expression and identity representations in human cortex. NeuroImage. 172, 689-702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.02.013