Leslie Ungerleider

Laboratory of Brain and Cognition

National Institute of Mental Health

Functional Connectivity of Face Selective Regions during the Resting State

Face recognition is a remarkable ability, given the tens of thousands of difference faces we can recognize, sometimes even many years later after a single encounter. Because of this unique ability, it has been proposed that there may exist specialized neural machinery dedicated to face recognition, as compared to the recognition of non-face objects. The current talk describes recent brain imaging and single-unit recording studies exploring the functional architecture of face processing in the primate brain. The talk will focus on the network dynamics mediating the discrimination and recognition of both facial identity and facial expression.

References

Heekeren HR, Marrett S, Ungerleider LG (2008) The neural systems that mediate human perceptual decision making. Nat Rev Neurosci 9:467-79

 

Rossi AF, Pessoa L, Desimone R, Underleider LG (2009) The prefrontal cortex and the executive control of attention. Exp Brain Res 192: 489-97