Seeing John Malkovich: the neural substrates of person categorization

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.10.032

NeuroImage

Volume 24, Issue 4, 15 February 2005, Pages 1147-1153

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.10.032 Get rights and content

Abstract

Neuroimaging data have implicated regions of the ventral temporal cortex (e.g., fusiform gyrus) as functionally important in face recognition. Recent evidence, however, suggests that these regions are not face-specific, but rather reflect subordinate-level categorical processing underpinned by perceptual expertise. Moreover, when people possess expertise for a particular class of stimuli (e.g., faces), subordinate-level identification is thought to be an automatic process. To investigate the neural substrates of person construal, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to contrast brain activity while participants judged faces at different levels of semantic specificity (i.e., identity vs. occupation). The results revealed that participants were quicker to access identity than occupational knowledge. In addition, greater activity was observed in bilateral regions of the fusiform gyrus on identity than occupation trials. Taken together, these findings support the viewpoint that person construal is characterized by the ability to access subordinate-level semantic information about people, a capacity that is underpinned by neural activity in discrete regions of the ventral temporal cortex.

Section snippets

Participants and design

Thirteen participants (6 males, mean age = 24 years) completed the study for course credit or $10. All participants were right-handed, reported no significant abnormal neurological history, and had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. Informed written consent for all participants was obtained prior to the experiment in accordance with the guidelines established by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at Dartmouth College. The experiment had a single factor (level of

Results

Behavioral data collected during scanning showed no difference in the accuracy [t(12) < 1, ns] of participants' responses [respective M's: occupation = 82.7%; identity = 82.3%]. There was, however, a difference in the time taken to make a correct response [t(12) = 3.16, P < 0.01], such that responses were faster on identity than occupation trials (respective M's: 765 ms vs. 853 ms).

To examine the neural correlates of person construal, we compared the BOLD response associated with identity

General discussion

The current behavioral results corroborate the contention that, at least for famous faces, the entry point for person recognition is at the level of a unique identifier (Tanaka, 2001, Tarr and Gauthier, 2000). Participants were quicker to access the identity than the occupation of a collection of famous individuals, thereby suggesting that person construal is automatized at the exemplar level of categorical abstraction. This result is at odds with serial models of face processing. The

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This is a coarse perceptual function that is parallel to a full and detail encoding of stimuli [1]. In the study of categorization, there are some reports that have related medial occipital activity when making the discrimination between in-group – out-groups differences [14], when participants are asked to classify pictures according to different categories like personal identity or work occupation [49], when participants need to discriminate stimuli according to gender, race and color of the picture [45] or when participants watch candidates from opposite political party [20]. This is also in same line with a study that related superior occipital areas with social stereotyping [32].
During a social evaluation, the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) plays an important role according to its contribution in making inferences about the mental states of others. However, what is the neural response if rTPJ function is inhibited during a mentalizing task? In this study, participants played the Dictator Game with two confederates: one playing cooperation (C) and other playing non-cooperation (NC) role and then they were scanned during a mentalizing test. However, we inhibited rTPJ using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) after they played the game and before they were scanned. In this test, participants read negative (Neg) or positive (Pos) personal situations and then they watched confederate's pictures. Images from the TMS group were compared against controls with no TMS stimulation. After statistical comparison, we found a significantly higher activity in right and left visual association areas (BA 18) during the NCPos > NCNeg condition in the TMS group compared with the No-TMS group. Same visual association areas have been described before when participants are processing visual emotional information or when making a fast social categorization. This could reflect a neural mechanism of socio - emotional categorization that emerges after rTPJ inhibition.
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Common neural systems associated with the recognition of famous faces and names: An event-related fMRI study
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Person recognition can be accomplished through several modalities (face, name, voice). Lesion, neurophysiology and neuroimaging studies have been conducted in an attempt to determine the similarities and differences in the neural networks associated with person identity via different modality inputs. The current study used event-related functional-MRI in 17 healthy participants to directly compare activation in response to randomly presented famous and non-famous names and faces (25 stimuli in each of the four categories). Findings indicated distinct areas of activation that differed for faces and names in regions typically associated with pre-semantic perceptual processes. In contrast, overlapping brain regions were activated in areas associated with the retrieval of biographical knowledge and associated social affective features. Specifically, activation for famous faces was primarily right lateralized and famous names were left-lateralized. However, for both stimuli, similar areas of bilateral activity were observed in the early phases of perceptual processing. Activation for fame, irrespective of stimulus modality, activated an extensive left hemisphere network, with bilateral activity observed in the hippocampi, posterior cingulate, and middle temporal gyri. Findings are discussed within the framework of recent proposals concerning the neural network of person identification.
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It has been suggested that knowledge about some famous people depends on both a generic semantic component and an autobiographical component [Westmacott, R., & Moscovitch, M. (2003). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory. Memory and Cognition, 31, 761–774]. The neuropsychological studies of semantic dementia (SD) and Alzheimer disease (AD) demonstrated that the two aspects are very likely to be mediated by different brain structures, with the episodic component being highly dependent upon the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) [Westmacott, R., Black, S. E., Freedman, M., & Moscovitch, M. (2004). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory: Evidence from Alzheimer's disease, semantic dementia, and amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 42, 25–48]. Using an fMRI design in healthy participants, we aimed: (i) to investigate the pattern of brain activations sustaining the autobiographical and the semantic aspects of knowledge about famous persons. Moreover, (ii) we examined if the stimulus material (face/name) influences the lateralisation of the cerebral networks. Our findings suggested that different patterns of activation corresponded to the presence or absence of personal significance linked to semantic knowledge; MTL was engaged only in the former case. Although choice of stimulus material did not influence the hemispheric lateralisation in “classical” terms, it did play a role in engaging different cerebral regions.
Exploring the Representations of Individual Entities in the Brain Combining EEG and Distributional Semantics
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Seeing John Malkovich: the neural substrates of person categorization

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants and design

Results

General discussion

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Cognition

NeuroImage

Curr. Biol.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Cogn. Psychol.

Neuropsychologia

Cogn. Psychol.

Cogn. Psychol.

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Neural correlates of verbal memory encoding during semantic and structural processing tasks

NeuroReport

Perceptual and symbol systems

Behav. Brain Sci.

Understanding face recognition

Br. J. Psychol.

Learning new faces in an interactive activation and competition model

Vis. Cogn.

Understanding face recognition with an interactive activation and competition model

Br. J. Psychol.

Are face-responsive regions selective only for faces?

NeuroReport

PsyScope: a new graphic interactive environment for designing psychology experiments

Behav. Res. Methods Instrum. Comput.

The brain binds entities and events by multiregional activation from convergence zones

Neural Comput.

Statistical parametric maps in functional imaging: a general linear approach

Hum. Brain Mapp.

Differing patterns of temporal atrophy in Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia

Neurology

Semantic dementia: clinical, radiological, and pathological perspectives

J. Neurol.

Activation of the middle fusiform ‘face area’ increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects

Nat. Neurosci.

Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition

Nat. Neurosci.

Identification of famous faces and buildings: a functional neuroimaging study of semantically unique items

Brain

The neural system sustaining face and proper-name processing

Brain