The changing landscape of functional brain networks for face processing in typical development.

Greater expertise for faces in adults than in children may be achieved by a dynamic interplay of functional segregation and integration of brain regions throughout development. The present study examined developmental changes in face network functional connectivity in children (5-12 years) and adults (18-43 years) during face-viewing using a graph-theory approach. A face-specific developmental change involved connectivity of the right occipital face area. During childhood, this node increased in strength and within-module clustering based on positive connectivity. These changes reflect an important role of the ROFA in segregation of function during childhood. In addition, strength and diversity of connections within a module that included primary visual areas (left and right calcarine) and limbic regions (left hippocampus and right inferior orbitofrontal cortex) increased from childhood to adulthood, reflecting increased visuo-limbic integration. This integration was pronounced for faces but also emerged for natural objects. Taken together, the primary face-specific developmental changes involved segregation of a posterior visual module during childhood, possibly implicated in early stage perceptual face processing, and greater integration of visuo-limbic connections from childhood to adulthood, which may reflect processing related to development of perceptual expertise for individuation of faces and other visually homogenous categories.

Progressive and regressive developmental changes in neural substrates for face processing: testing specific predictions of the Interactive Specialization account.

Face processing undergoes a fairly protracted developmental time course but the neural underpinnings are not well understood. Prior fMRI studies have only examined progressive changes (i.e., increases in specialization in certain regions with age), which would be predicted by both the Interactive Specialization (IS) and maturational theories of neural development. To differentiate between these accounts, the present study also examined regressive changes (i.e., decreases in specialization in certain regions with age), which is predicted by the IS but not maturational account. The fMRI results show that both progressive and regressive changes occur, consistent with IS. Progressive changes mostly occurred in occipital-fusiform and inferior frontal cortex whereas regressive changes largely emerged in parietal and lateral temporal cortices. Moreover, inconsistent with the maturational account, all of the regions involved in face viewing in adults were active in children, with some regions already specialized for face processing by 5 years of age and other regions activated in children but not specifically for faces. Thus, neurodevelopment of face processing involves dynamic interactions among brain regions including age-related increases and decreases in specialization and the involvement of different regions at different ages. These results are more consistent with IS than maturational models of neural development.

Neural developmental changes in processing inverted faces.

We explored developmental changes in neural substrates for face processing, using fMRI. Children and adults performed a perceptual-matching task with upright and inverted face and animal stimuli. Behaviorally, inversion disrupted face processing more than animal processing for adults and older children. In line with this behavioral pattern, the left middle occipital gyrus showed a strongerface than animal inversion effect in adults. Moreover, a superior aspect of this region showed a greater face inversion effect in older than in younger children, indicating a developmental change in the processing of inverted faces. The visual regions recruited for inverted face processing in adults also overlapped more with brain regions involved in the viewing of upright objects than with regions involved in the viewing of upright faces in an independent localizer task. Hence, when faces are inverted, adults recruit regions normally engaged for recognizing objects, possibly pointing to a role for the featural processing of inverted faces.

Effects of structural similarity on neural substrates for object recognition.

Human occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) is critically involved in object recognition, but the functional organization of this brain region is controversial. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal changes were recorded in humans during an animal-matching task that parametrically varied degree of structural (i.e., shape) similarity among the items. fMRI signal in the mid- to anterior-fusiform gyrus increased as animals overlapped more in terms of structure and as reaction time increased. In contrast, relatively more posterior aspects of the fusiform gyrus and inferior occipital cortex showed greater fMRI signal when the animals overlapped less in terms of structure. A similar organization emerged when three-dimensional geometric shapes were matched, indicating that OTC is differentially tuned to varying degrees of overlap in object structure, regardless of taxonomic category. We discuss how the present findings fit in with current functional neuroanatomical approaches to object recognition.

Shared and dissociated cortical regions for object and letter processing.

The present study determined the extent to which object and letter recognition recruit similar or dissociated neural resources. Participants passively viewed and silently named line drawings of objects, single letters, and visual noise patterns and centrally fixated an asterisk. We used whole-brain functional MRI and a very conservative approach to hypothesis testing that distinguished among brain regions that were selectively activated by different experimental conditions and those that were conjointly activated. The left fusiform gyrus (BA 19 & 37) and left inferior frontal cortex BA(44/6) showed a greater degree of conjoined activation for objects and letters than selective activation for either category, whereas left inferior parietal cortex (BA 40) and the left insula showed a strong letter-selective response. Equal recruitment of left fusiform and inferior frontal regions by objects and letters reflects similar demands on cognitive processing by these two categories and argues against category-specific modules in these regions. However, cortical systems for object and letter processing are not completely shared given the exclusive activation of left inferior parietal cortex by letters.

Natural and manufactured objects activate the fusiform face area.

Recent fMRI studies indicate that the anterior fusiform gyrus (the fusiform face area, FFA) is specialized for face recognition. However, the analyses used to determine face selectivity have not ruled out the possibility that other object categories produce significant activation in the FFA, relative to baseline. In the current fMRI study, we use a conservative hypothesis testing approach to show that FFA activation is not selective for faces. Rather, the FFA response is almost completely explained by a graded response in which faces produce more activation than either manufactured or natural objects, but those categories produce a statistically greater response than the baseline task. These findings question whether the FFA can be interpreted as a specialized module for face recognition.