Shared neural codes for visual and semantic information about familiar faces in a common representational space

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Recognizing familiar faces involves visual processing and accessing associated social knowledge.
• While visual appearance is constant, social knowledge about individuals can be unique.
• Understanding shared neural representations of familiar faces is crucial for social cognition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if neural representations of personally familiar faces are shared across individuals who know the same people.
• To differentiate shared representations in visual processing areas versus areas processing non-visual social information.
• To explore the neural basis of shared social knowledge derived from personal interactions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized hyperaligned functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.
• Employed between-subject multivariate decoding to analyze brain activity patterns.
• Focused on representations of personally familiar and visually familiar faces.

Main Results:

• Identity of visually familiar faces was decoded across brains in the core visual processing system.
• Identity of personally familiar faces was decoded across brains in both core visual and extended non-visual processing systems.
• Shared neural representations were found in areas beyond basic visual recognition for personally familiar faces.

Conclusions:

• Personal interactions lead to shared neural representations for familiar individuals.
• Shared representations encompass both visual and non-visual (social) features of familiar faces.
• The extended face perception system shows shared representations reflecting common social knowledge.