ArticleScience advances2023
The neural code for "face cells" is not face-specific.
Article in Science advances, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Self-supervised learning yields representational signatures of category-selective cortex.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Multidimensional Feature Tuning in Category Selective Areas of Human Visual Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Higher visual areas act like domain-general filters with strong selectivity and functional specialization.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex.Cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Deep Sound Synthesis Matched to Brain Activity Recapitulates Preferential Responses to Speech and Music.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Combined evidence from artificial neural networks and human brain-lesion models reveals that language modulates vision in human perception.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Early face deprivation leads to long-lasting deficits in cortical face processing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The effects of task similarity during representation learning in brains and neural networks.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Mapping macaque to human cortex with natural scene responses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Detection of Individual Differences Encoded in Sequential Variations of Elements in Zebra Finch Songs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Face pareidolia minimally engages macaque face selective neurons.Progress in neurobiology · 2025Article
- 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
- Innate face-selectivity in the brain of young domestic chicks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Contrastive learning explains the emergence and function of visual category-selective regions.Science advances · 2024Article
- The face inversion effect through the lens of deep neural networks.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Decoding face recognition abilities in the human brain.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Disentangled deep generative models reveal coding principles of the human face processing network.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Face cells are neurons that respond more to faces than to non-face objects. They are found in clusters in the inferotemporal cortex, thought to process faces specifically, and, hence, studied using faces almost exclusively. Analyzing neural responses in and around macaque face patches to hundreds of objects, we found graded response profiles for non-face objects that predicted the degree of face selectivity and provided information on face-cell tuning beyond that from actual faces. This relationship between non-face and face responses was not predicted by color and simple shape properties but by information encoded in deep neural networks trained on general objects rather than face classification. These findings contradict the long-standing assumption that face versus non-face selectivity emerges from face-specific features and challenge the practice of focusing on only the most effective stimulus. They provide evidence instead that category-selective neurons are best understood by their tuning directions in a domain-general object space.
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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.