Abstract
A region in ventral human cortex (fusiform face area, FFA) thought
to be important for face perception responds strongly to faces and
less strongly to nonface objects. This pattern of response may reflect
a uniform face-selective neural population or activity averaged across
populations with heterogeneous selectivity. Using high-resolution
functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we found that the FFA
has a reliable heterogeneous structure: localized subregions within
the FFA highly selective to faces are spatially interdigitated with
localized subregions highly selective to different object categories.
We found a preponderance of face-selective responses in the FFA,
but no difference in selectivity to faces compared to nonfaces. Thus,
standard fMRI of the FFA reflects averaging of heterogeneous highly
selective neural populations of differing sizes, rather than higher
selectivity to faces. These results suggest that visual processing
in this region is not exclusive to faces. Overall, our approach provides
a framework for understanding the fine-scale structure of neural
representations in the human brain.
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