ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Face neurons encode nonsemantic features.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Category selectivity observed in the human brain is distinct from category selectivity observed in artificial neural networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mapping macaque to human cortex with natural scene responses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Face cells encode object parts more than facial configuration of illusory faces.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Neuronal Mechanisms Underlying Face Recognition in Non-human Primates.The Japanese psychological research · 2024Article
- A concentration of visual cortex-like neurons in prefrontal cortex.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Face detection mechanisms: NatureFrontiers in neuroscience · 2024Review
- Macaques recognize features in synthetic images derived from ventral stream neurons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The primate inferior temporal cortex contains neurons that respond more strongly to faces than to other objects. Termed “face neurons,” these neurons are thought to be selective for faces as a semantic category. However, face neurons also partly respond to clocks, fruits, and single eyes, raising the question of whether face neurons are better described as selective for visual features related to faces but dissociable from them. We used a recently described algorithm, XDream, to evolve stimuli that strongly activated face neurons. XDream leverages a generative neural network that is not limited to realistic objects. Human participants assessed images evolved for face neurons and for nonface neurons and natural images depicting faces, cars, fruits, etc. Evolved images were consistently judged to be distinct from real faces. Images evolved for face neurons were rated as slightly more similar to faces than images evolved for nonface neurons. There was a correlation among natural images between face neuron activity and subjective “faceness” ratings, but this relationship did not hold for face neuron–evolved images, which triggered high activity but were rated low in faceness. Our results suggest that so-called face neurons are better described as tuned to visual features rather than semantic categories.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.