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Cordeau M, Bichoutar I, Meunier D, Loh KK, Michaud I, Coulon O, Auzias G, Belin P. Anatomo-functional correspondence in the voice-selective regions of human prefrontal cortex. Neuroimage 2023; 279:120336. [PMID: 37597590 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120336] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2023] [Revised: 06/20/2023] [Accepted: 08/16/2023] [Indexed: 08/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Group level analyses of functional regions involved in voice perception show evidence of 3 sets of bilateral voice-sensitive activations in the human prefrontal cortex, named the anterior, middle and posterior Frontal Voice Areas (FVAs). However, the relationship with the underlying sulcal anatomy, highly variable in this region, is still unknown. We examined the inter-individual variability of the FVAs in conjunction with the sulcal anatomy. To do so, anatomical and functional MRI scans from 74 subjects were analyzed to generate individual contrast maps of the FVAs and relate them to each subject's manually labeled prefrontal sulci. We report two major results. First, the frontal activations for the voice are significantly associated with the sulcal anatomy. Second, this correspondence with the sulcal anatomy at the individual level is a better predictor than coordinates in the MNI space. These findings offer new perspectives for the understanding of anatomical-functional correspondences in this complex cortical region. They also shed light on the importance of considering individual-specific variations in subject's anatomy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mélina Cordeau
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, UMR 7289 CNRS, Marseille 13005, France.
| | - Ihsane Bichoutar
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
| | - David Meunier
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, UMR 7289 CNRS, Marseille 13005, France
| | - Kep-Kee Loh
- Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore
| | - Isaure Michaud
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, UMR 7289 CNRS, Marseille 13005, France
| | - Olivier Coulon
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, UMR 7289 CNRS, Marseille 13005, France; Institute of Language Communication and the Brain, ILCB, Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Guillaume Auzias
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, UMR 7289 CNRS, Marseille 13005, France
| | - Pascal Belin
- Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, UMR 7289 CNRS, Marseille 13005, France; Psychology Department, Montreal University, C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7, Canada; Institute of Language Communication and the Brain, ILCB, Aix-en-Provence, France
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2
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Sharma S, Vinken K, Livingstone MS. When the whole is only the parts: non-holistic object parts predominate face-cell responses to illusory faces. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.09.22.558887. [PMID: 37790322 PMCID: PMC10542491 DOI: 10.1101/2023.09.22.558887] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/05/2023]
Abstract
Humans are inclined to perceive faces in everyday objects with a face-like configuration. This illusion, known as face pareidolia, is often attributed to a specialized network of 'face cells' in primates. We found that face cells in macaque inferotemporal cortex responded selectively to pareidolia images, but this selectivity did not require a holistic, face-like configuration, nor did it encode human faceness ratings. Instead, it was driven mostly by isolated object parts that are perceived as eyes only within a face-like context. These object parts lack usual characteristics of primate eyes, pointing to the role of lower-level features. Our results suggest that face-cell responses are dominated by local, generic features, unlike primate visual perception, which requires holistic information. These findings caution against interpreting neural activity through the lens of human perception. Doing so could impose human perceptual biases, like seeing faces where none exist, onto our understanding of neural activity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Saloni Sharma
- Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115
| | - Kasper Vinken
- Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115
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3
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Vinken K, Prince JS, Konkle T, Livingstone MS. The neural code for "face cells" is not face-specific. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2023; 9:eadg1736. [PMID: 37647400 PMCID: PMC10468123 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg1736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2022] [Accepted: 07/27/2023] [Indexed: 09/01/2023]
Abstract
Face cells are neurons that respond more to faces than to non-face objects. They are found in clusters in the inferotemporal cortex, thought to process faces specifically, and, hence, studied using faces almost exclusively. Analyzing neural responses in and around macaque face patches to hundreds of objects, we found graded response profiles for non-face objects that predicted the degree of face selectivity and provided information on face-cell tuning beyond that from actual faces. This relationship between non-face and face responses was not predicted by color and simple shape properties but by information encoded in deep neural networks trained on general objects rather than face classification. These findings contradict the long-standing assumption that face versus non-face selectivity emerges from face-specific features and challenge the practice of focusing on only the most effective stimulus. They provide evidence instead that category-selective neurons are best understood by their tuning directions in a domain-general object space.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kasper Vinken
- Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Jacob S. Prince
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02478, USA
| | - Talia Konkle
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02478, USA
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Laurent MA, Audurier P, De Castro V, Gao X, Durand JB, Jonas J, Rossion B, Cottereau BR. Towards an optimization of functional localizers in non-human primate neuroimaging with (fMRI) frequency-tagging. Neuroimage 2023; 270:119959. [PMID: 36822249 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119959] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/09/2022] [Revised: 02/16/2023] [Accepted: 02/20/2023] [Indexed: 02/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Non-human primate (NHP) neuroimaging can provide essential insights into the neural basis of human cognitive functions. While functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizers can play an essential role in reaching this objective (Russ et al., 2021), they often differ substantially across species in terms of paradigms, measured signals, and data analysis, biasing the comparisons. Here we introduce a functional frequency-tagging face localizer for NHP imaging, successfully developed in humans and outperforming standard face localizers (Gao et al., 2018). FMRI recordings were performed in two awake macaques. Within a rapid 6 Hz stream of natural non-face objects images, human or monkey face stimuli were presented in bursts every 9 s. We also included control conditions with phase-scrambled versions of all images. As in humans, face-selective activity was objectively identified and quantified at the peak of the face-stimulation frequency (0.111 Hz) and its second harmonic (0.222 Hz) in the Fourier domain. Focal activations with a high signal-to-noise ratio were observed in regions previously described as face-selective, mainly in the STS (clusters PL, ML, MF; also, AL, AF), both for human and monkey faces. Robust face-selective activations were also found in the prefrontal cortex of one monkey (PVL and PO clusters). Face-selective neural activity was highly reliable and excluded all contributions from low-level visual cues contained in the amplitude spectrum of the stimuli. These observations indicate that fMRI frequency-tagging provides a highly valuable approach to objectively compare human and monkey visual recognition systems within the same framework.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Pauline Audurier
- Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, CNRS, 31052 Toulouse, France
| | - Vanessa De Castro
- Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, CNRS, 31052 Toulouse, France
| | - Xiaoqing Gao
- Center for Psychological Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou City, China
| | - Jean-Baptiste Durand
- Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, CNRS, 31052 Toulouse, France
| | - Jacques Jonas
- Université de Lorraine, CNRS, CRAN, F-54000 Nancy, France; Universite de Lorraine, CHRU-Nancy, Service de neurologie, F-54000, France
| | - Bruno Rossion
- Université de Lorraine, CNRS, CRAN, F-54000 Nancy, France
| | - Benoit R Cottereau
- Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, CNRS, 31052 Toulouse, France.
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Zhan M, Pallier C, Agrawal A, Dehaene S, Cohen L. Does the visual word form area split in bilingual readers? A millimeter-scale 7-T fMRI study. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2023; 9:eadf6140. [PMID: 37018408 PMCID: PMC10075963 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf6140] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2022] [Accepted: 03/06/2023] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
In expert readers, a brain region known as the visual word form area (VWFA) is highly sensitive to written words, exhibiting a posterior-to-anterior gradient of increasing sensitivity to orthographic stimuli whose statistics match those of real words. Using high-resolution 7-tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we ask whether, in bilingual readers, distinct cortical patches specialize for different languages. In 21 English-French bilinguals, unsmoothed 1.2-millimeters fMRI revealed that the VWFA is actually composed of several small cortical patches highly selective for reading, with a posterior-to-anterior word-similarity gradient, but with near-complete overlap between the two languages. In 10 English-Chinese bilinguals, however, while most word-specific patches exhibited similar reading specificity and word-similarity gradients for reading in Chinese and English, additional patches responded specifically to Chinese writing and, unexpectedly, to faces. Our results show that the acquisition of multiple writing systems can indeed tune the visual cortex differently in bilinguals, sometimes leading to the emergence of cortical patches specialized for a single language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Minye Zhan
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, 91191 Gif/Yvette, France
| | - Christophe Pallier
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, 91191 Gif/Yvette, France
| | - Aakash Agrawal
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, 91191 Gif/Yvette, France
| | - Stanislas Dehaene
- Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, INSERM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, 91191 Gif/Yvette, France
- Collège de France, Université Paris-Sciences-Lettres (PSL), 11 Place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Laurent Cohen
- Inserm U 1127, CNRS UMR 7225, Sorbonne Université, Institut du Cerveau, ICM, Paris, France
- AP-HP, Hôpital de la Pitié Salpêtrière, Fédération de Neurologie, Paris, France
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6
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Abstract
The parcellation of the primate cerebral cortex into numbered regions, based on cytoarchitecture, has greatly helped neuroscientists in our quest to understand how the brain implements cognition. Nonetheless, these maps provide an unnecessarily constraining view of how we should do functional neuroanatomy. It is time to think more broadly. Doing so will help advance the goal of incorporating ideas about emergentist organization and interactional complexity into neuroscience.
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Gonçalves A, Hattori Y, Adachi I. Staring death in the face: chimpanzees' attention towards conspecific skulls and the implications of a face module guiding their behaviour. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2022; 9:210349. [PMID: 35345434 PMCID: PMC8941397 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210349] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2021] [Accepted: 02/11/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Chimpanzees exhibit a variety of behaviours surrounding their dead, although much less is known about how they respond towards conspecific skeletons. We tested chimpanzees' visual attention to images of conspecific and non-conspecific stimuli (cat/chimp/dog/rat), shown simultaneously in four corners of a screen in distinct orientations (frontal/diagonal/lateral) of either one of three types (faces/skulls/skull-shaped stones). Additionally, we compared their visual attention towards chimpanzee-only stimuli (faces/skulls/skull-shaped stones). Lastly, we tested their attention towards specific regions of chimpanzee skulls. We theorized that chimpanzee skulls retaining face-like features would be perceived similarly to chimpanzee faces and thus be subjected to similar biases. Overall, supporting our hypotheses, the chimpanzees preferred conspecific-related stimuli. The results showed that chimpanzees attended: (i) significantly longer towards conspecific skulls than other species skulls (particularly in forward-facing and to a lesser extent diagonal orientations); (ii) significantly longer towards conspecific faces than other species faces at forward-facing and diagonal orientations; (iii) longer towards chimpanzee faces compared with chimpanzee skulls and skull-shaped stones, and (iv) attended significantly longer to the teeth, similar to findings for elephants. We suggest that chimpanzee skulls retain relevant, face-like features that arguably activate a domain-specific face module in chimpanzees' brains, guiding their attention.
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Affiliation(s)
- André Gonçalves
- Language and Intelligence Section, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, 484-8506 Aichi, Japan
| | - Yuko Hattori
- Center for International Collaboration and Advanced Studies in Primatology, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, 484-8506 Aichi, Japan
| | - Ikuma Adachi
- Language and Intelligence Section, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, 484-8506 Aichi, Japan
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Kaas JH, Qi HX, Stepniewska I. Escaping the nocturnal bottleneck, and the evolution of the dorsal and ventral streams of visual processing in primates. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2022; 377:20210293. [PMID: 34957843 PMCID: PMC8710890 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0293] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/20/2021] [Accepted: 09/21/2021] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Early mammals were small and nocturnal. Their visual systems had regressed and they had poor vision. After the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 mya, some but not all escaped the 'nocturnal bottleneck' by recovering high-acuity vision. By contrast, early primates escaped the bottleneck within the age of dinosaurs by having large forward-facing eyes and acute vision while remaining nocturnal. We propose that these primates differed from other mammals by changing the balance between two sources of visual information to cortex. Thus, cortical processing became less dependent on a relay of information from the superior colliculus (SC) to temporal cortex and more dependent on information distributed from primary visual cortex (V1). In addition, the two major classes of visual information from the retina became highly segregated into magnocellular (M cell) projections from V1 to the primate-specific temporal visual area (MT), and parvocellular-dominated projections to the dorsolateral visual area (DL or V4). The greatly expanded P cell inputs from V1 informed the ventral stream of cortical processing involving temporal and frontal cortex. The M cell pathways from V1 and the SC informed the dorsal stream of cortical processing involving MT, surrounding temporal cortex, and parietal-frontal sensorimotor domains. This article is part of the theme issue 'Systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jon H. Kaas
- Department of Pshycology, Vanderbilt University, 301 Wilson Hall, 111 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37240, USA
| | - Hui-Xin Qi
- Department of Pshycology, Vanderbilt University, 301 Wilson Hall, 111 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37240, USA
| | - Iwona Stepniewska
- Department of Pshycology, Vanderbilt University, 301 Wilson Hall, 111 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37240, USA
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9
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Abstract
Face perception is a socially important but complex process with many stages and many facets. There is substantial evidence from many sources that it involves a large extent of the temporal lobe, from the ventral occipitotemporal cortex and superior temporal sulci to anterior temporal regions. While early human neuroimaging work suggested a core face network consisting of the occipital face area, fusiform face area, and posterior superior temporal sulcus, studies in both humans and monkeys show a system of face patches stretching from posterior to anterior in both the superior temporal sulcus and inferotemporal cortex. Sophisticated techniques such as fMRI adaptation have shown that these face-activated regions show responses that have many of the attributes of human face processing. Lesions of some of these regions in humans lead to variants of prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize the identity of a face. Lesion, imaging, and electrophysiologic data all suggest that there is a segregation between identity and expression processing, though some suggest this may be better characterized as a distinction between static and dynamic facial information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jason J S Barton
- Division of Neuro-ophthalmology, Departments of Medicine (Neurology), Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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10
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Roumazeilles L, Schurz M, Lojkiewiez M, Verhagen L, Schüffelgen U, Marche K, Mahmoodi A, Emberton A, Simpson K, Joly O, Khamassi M, Rushworth MFS, Mars RB, Sallet J. Social prediction modulates activity of macaque superior temporal cortex. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2021; 7:eabh2392. [PMID: 34524842 PMCID: PMC8443173 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh2392] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2021] [Accepted: 07/26/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
The ability to attribute thoughts to others, also called theory of mind (TOM), has been extensively studied in humans; however, its evolutionary origins have been challenged. Computationally, the basis of TOM has been interpreted within the predictive coding framework and associated with activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Here, we revealed, using a nonlinguistic task and functional magnetic resonance imaging, that activity in a region of the macaque middle superior temporal cortex was specifically modulated by the predictability of social situations. As in human TPJ, this region could be distinguished from other temporal regions involved in face processing. Our result suggests the existence of a precursor for the TOM ability in the last common ancestor of human and Old World monkeys.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lea Roumazeilles
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Matthias Schurz
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Mathilde Lojkiewiez
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Lennart Verhagen
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Urs Schüffelgen
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Kevin Marche
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Ali Mahmoodi
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Andrew Emberton
- Biomedical Sciences Services, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Kelly Simpson
- Biomedical Sciences Services, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Olivier Joly
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Mehdi Khamassi
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Paris, France
| | - Matthew F. S. Rushworth
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Rogier B. Mars
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Jérôme Sallet
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Univ Lyon, Université Lyon 1, Inserm, Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute U1208, Bron, France
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Arcaro MJ, Livingstone MS. On the relationship between maps and domains in inferotemporal cortex. Nat Rev Neurosci 2021; 22:573-583. [PMID: 34345018 PMCID: PMC8865285 DOI: 10.1038/s41583-021-00490-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/24/2021] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
How does the brain encode information about the environment? Decades of research have led to the pervasive notion that the object-processing pathway in primate cortex consists of multiple areas that are each specialized to process different object categories (such as faces, bodies, hands, non-face objects and scenes). The anatomical consistency and modularity of these regions have been interpreted as evidence that these regions are innately specialized. Here, we propose that ventral-stream modules do not represent clusters of circuits that each evolved to process some specific object category particularly important for survival, but instead reflect the effects of experience on a domain-general architecture that evolved to be able to adapt, within a lifetime, to its particular environment. Furthermore, we propose that the mechanisms underlying the development of domains are both evolutionarily old and universal across cortex. Topographic maps are fundamental, governing the development of specializations across systems, providing a framework for brain organization.
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