认知的神经基础研究组
2007
  • 题目:Reading out the perceptual boundary between human and monkey face categories from the inferior temporal cortex of the macaque monkey
  • 作者:G. R. Sigala Alanis; N. K. Logothetis; G. Rainer
  • 刊物名称:30th European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP 2007)
  • 发表年度:2007
  • DOI:
摘要
We demonstrated that, when human subjects have to classify human/monkey morphed faces that change along a continuum, they draw the category boundary closer to their own species (at approximately 60% human/40% monkey). Considering that neurons in the infero-temporal (IT) cortex encode face information, we recorded the single-unit activity (SUA) of 118 neurons and the local field potential (LFP) at 58 sites of the IT cortex of one macaque monkey during fixation of morphed faces. Out of 118 single units, 85% were visually responsive and 23% were face cells according to standard criteria. We used a two-class (human ^ monkey) classifier (k-NearestNeighbor) to analyze the population activity of visually responsive units and all LFPs. Symmetric to the findings in humans, the classifier drew the category boundary closer to the monkey category (at approximately 40% human/60% monkey) for both kinds of neural signals. These results suggest an `own-species' advantage in the encoding of face stimuli. Our findings also indicate that a large fraction of IT neurons participate in the encoding of face categories. [Supported by the Max Planck Society.]