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Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Invariant Face Representations in the Human Brain
Amita Giri1,2, Grace Smith1, Cassia Manting1,3
1McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|June 12, 2025
Summary
The brain rapidly extracts familiar face identity, becoming view-invariant within 89ms. Age and gender processing are parallel, with task demands influencing later stages of face perception.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroimaging
- Human Face Perception
Background:
- The human brain efficiently recognizes familiar faces despite appearance variations.
- Spatiotemporal dynamics and task dependency of invariant face representations are not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To characterize the emergence of invariant face representations using magnetoencephalography (MEG).
- To investigate the temporal hierarchy and task modulation of face processing.
Main Methods:
- Multivariate decoding of MEG responses and source localization.
- Familiar celebrity faces varying in viewpoint, gender, and age were presented.
- Participants performed a one-back task on identity or image.
Main Results:
- Identity information rapidly emerged, becoming view-invariant by 89ms.
- Age and gender information emerged in parallel with view-invariant identity.
- Task demands modulated late-stage identity and gender representations.
- Occipital and fusiform face areas showed involvement in processing.
Conclusions:
- The brain extracts view-invariant identity from familiar faces through specific spatiotemporal dynamics.
- Age and gender are processed in parallel, with early stages being feedforward.
- Later processing stages are influenced by task demands, providing insights into computational models of face perception.
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