Face pareidolia minimally engages macaque face selective neurons

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Primate Cognition
• Visual Processing

Background:

• The macaque cerebral cortex has specialized 'face patches' for processing facial information.
• The precise tuning properties of these face patches, especially concerning illusory faces, remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether neurons in fMRI-defined face-selective regions respond to face pareidolia stimuli.
• To compare neural responses to real faces, pareidolia-evoking objects, and control objects.

Main Methods:

• Recorded single unit activity from four face-selective regions: anterior medial (AM), anterior fundus (AF), prefrontal orbital (PO), and perirhinal cortex (PRh).
• Presented macaque subjects with images of real macaque faces, objects evoking face pareidolia, and matched control objects.

Main Results:

• Found no general preference for pareidolia-evoking objects over control objects in the tested face patches.
• While some neurons responded more to pareidolia stimuli, overall population responses were similar to control objects and significantly lower than responses to real faces.

Conclusions:

• Neural activity in these four macaque face patches is primarily tuned to realistic facial features.
• The heightened attention to face-like stimuli in pareidolia is likely mediated by brain regions outside these specific face patches.