Find a Face

How do you know that a face is a face? Specific regions of the primate brain are responsible for identifying categories of objects, such as faces, body parts, and inanimate things. However, we never see these items in isolation as they’re usually embedded within a more complex visual scene. To understand the role of context in this process, neuroscientists recorded neuronal activity in macaque face-selective brain regions. This image maps the areas of a visual scene that elicited the most (red) and least (blue) electrical activity in these neurons. Interestingly, face-selective neurons were active not only when monkeys saw images of faces (as shown here), but also when the context meant they expected to see a face – for example, on top of a body shape – even if the face wasn’t there. These findings illustrate how the primate brain relies on contextual cues to help make sense of the visual environment.

Written by Gaëlle Coullon

Gaëlle Coullon

Writer

Gaëlle is a consultant and trainer in research communication and commercialisation. As an ex-neuroscientist, she is always looking for new ways to combine her love of writing with everything brain related.

• Image adapted from work by Michael J Arcaro, Carlos Ponce and Margaret Livingstone
• Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, June 2020