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Patches of face-selective cortex in the macaque frontal lobe

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 877–879 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

In primates, specialized occipital-temporal face areas support the visual analysis of faces, but it is unclear whether similarly specialized areas exist in the frontal lobe. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in alert macaques, we identified three discrete regions of highly face-selective cortex in ventral prefrontal cortex, one of which was strongly lateralized to the right hemisphere. These prefrontal face patches may constitute dedicated modules for retrieving and responding to facial information.

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Figure 1: Face-selective patches in prefrontal cortex of four macaques.
Figure 2: Sensitivity of prefrontal and temporal face patches to facial expression.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to K. Thoss and R. Hakizimana for technical support, M. Borisov for help with data analysis, H. Komatsu for providing pictures of macaque faces and to Guerbet for providing Sinerem. This work was supported by a Sofia Kovalevskaya Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Science Foundation (DFG FR1437/3-1) and the German Ministry of Science (grant 01GO0506, Bremen Center for Advanced Imaging).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Brain Research and Center for Advanced Imaging, University of Bremen, P.O.B. 330440, Bremen, D-28334, FR, Germany

    Doris Y Tsao, Nicole Schweers, Sebastian Moeller & Winrich A Freiwald

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  1. Doris Y Tsao
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  2. Nicole Schweers
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  3. Sebastian Moeller
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  4. Winrich A Freiwald
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Correspondence to Doris Y Tsao.

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Supplementary Figures 1–3, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Methods and Supplementary Note (PDF 1089 kb)

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Tsao, D., Schweers, N., Moeller, S. et al. Patches of face-selective cortex in the macaque frontal lobe. Nat Neurosci 11, 877–879 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2158

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