PSYC 215 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Superior Temporal Sulcus, Devo, Prosopagnosia
Document Summary
Farah ch5 -- face recognition: are faces special, faces and other complex objects w/ canonical upright orientations have different pattern perceptions. Inversion of faces harder to id than flipping objects: face recog has earlier devo precursors and is more orientation-sensitive than the recog of other types of object, 3 criteria for face and nonface object recog. Functional independence: ability of each system to operate w/o the other. Information processing function: neural systems underlying face and object recog, face cells. High response to faces; little to non-face objects/scrambled arrays of face parts. Inferotemporal cortex (monkey); superior temporal sulcus (sts- 20% cells) Invariance over position, size, and in some cases orientation. Selectivity to facial appearance, facial id, emotional expression, direction of gaze. Each cell has a gradient of responsiveness to a range of faces. Distinctive -- # face cells in certain areas; optimal stimuli for driving face and non-face (less complex/specific) cells.