RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The neural code for ‘face cells’ is not face specific
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.03.06.483186
DO 10.1101/2022.03.06.483186
A1 Kasper Vinken
A1 Talia Konkle
A1 Margaret Livingstone
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/03/07/2022.03.06.483186.abstract
AB ‘Face cells’ are visual neurons that selectively respond more to faces than other objects. Clustered together in inferotemporal cortex, they are thought to form a network of modules specialized in face processing by encoding face-specific features. Here we reveal that their category selectivity is instead captured by domain-general attributes. Analyzing neural responses in and around macaque face patches to hundreds of objects, we discovered graded tuning for non-face objects that was more predictive of face preference than was tuning for faces themselves. The relationship between category-level face selectivity and image-level non-face tuning was not predicted by color and simple shape properties, but by domain-general information encoded in deep neural networks trained on object classification. These findings contradict the long-standing assumption that face cells owe their category selectivity to face-specific features, challenging the prevailing idea that visual processing is carried out by discrete modules, each specialized in a semantically distinct domain.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.