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Different cortical dynamics in face and body perception: an MEG study.
Hanneke K M Meeren1, Beatrice de Gelder, Seppo P Ahlfors
1Cognitive Neuroscience, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Plos One
|September 17, 2013
Summary
The ventral temporal cortex (VTC) processes faces early, while the lateral occipito-temporal cortex (LOTC) processes bodies early. Distinct brain regions and timing reveal specialized visual perception networks for faces and bodies.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Visual perception of faces and bodies involves distributed occipito-temporal cortex networks.
- The precise temporal dynamics and functional roles within these networks remain largely unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of neural activity during face and body perception.
- To elucidate the distinct roles of occipito-temporal areas in processing faces versus bodies.
Main Methods:
- Magnetoencephalography (MEG) recorded brain activity with millisecond resolution.
- Stimuli included photographs of faces, bodies, and control objects.
- Cortical activity was estimated using anatomically-constrained noise-normalised minimum-norm estimate and analyzed with spatiotemporal cluster analysis.
Main Results:
- Face-selective activity occurred early (120-200 ms) in a widespread occipito-temporal network, including the ventral temporal cortex (VTC).
- Body-selective responses were initially confined to the lateral occipito-temporal cortex (LOTC) at early latencies.
- Sustained body-selective responses were observed later in the orbitofrontal cortex (200-700 ms) and lateral temporal cortex/VTC (after 500 ms).
Conclusions:
- The VTC plays a crucial role in early face processing but not early body processing.
- The LOTC, encompassing the extra-striate body area (EBA), is dominant for early body perception.
- VTC contributes to later and post-perceptual stages for body information.
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