RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Idiosyncratic, retinotopic bias in face identification modulated by familiarity
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 253468
DO 10.1101/253468
A1 Matteo Visconti di Oleggio Castello
A1 Morgan Taylor
A1 Patrick Cavanagh
A1 M. Ida Gobbini
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/26/253468.abstract
AB The perception of gender and age of unfamiliar faces is reported to vary idiosyncratically across retinal locations such that, for example, the same androgynous face may appear to be male at one location but female at another. Here we test spatial heterogeneity for the recognition of the identity of personally familiar faces. We found idiosyncratic biases that were stable within subjects and that varied more across locations for low as compared to high familiar faces. These data suggest that like face gender and age, face identity is processed, in part, by independent populations of neurons monitoring restricted spatial regions and that the recognition responses vary for the same face across these different locations. Moreover, repeated exposure to the same face in different portions of the visual field due to repeated and varied social interactions appears to lead to adjustment of these independent face recognition neurons so that the same familiar face is eventually more likely to elicit the same recognition response across widely separated regions.Significance statement In this work we tested spatial heterogeneity for the recognition of personally familiar faces. We found retinotopic biases that varied more across locations for low as compared to highly familiar faces. The retinotopic biases were idiosyncratic and stable within subjects. Our data suggest that, like face gender and age, face identity is processed by independent populations of neurons monitoring restricted spatial regions and that recognition may vary for the same face at these different locations. Unlike previous findings, our data show how the effect of learning modifies the representation of face identity in retinotopically-organized visual cortex. This new perspective has broader implications for understanding how learning optimizes visual processes for socially salient stimuli.We would like to thank the Marten’s Family Fund for its support.