ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
A familiar face and person processing area in the human temporal pole.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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15 citing papers in PubMed.
- The critical role of the right anterior fusiform gyrus in unfamiliar face identity discrimination.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- APOE ε4-related structural vulnerability in mild cognitive impairment: a subsystem-based analysis of the default mode network.Research square · 2026Article
- The state of modelling face processing in humans with deep learning.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Review
- Distinct Resting-State Connectomes for Face and Scene Perception Predict Individual Task Performance.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Neural responses to virtual avatars are shaped by user preference and personality traits.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Direct cortical stimulation-evoked symptoms in the human temporal pole: a cohort study.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2026Article
- Using Instagram for public education in trauma prevention: experience of an academic Trauma League.Trauma surgery & acute care open · 2026Article
- Mapping the Cross-species Brain Connectivity Atlas and Hemispheric Asymmetry of the Temporal Pole in Humans and Macaques.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Power Spectral Slope as a Novel Brain Functional Marker for Major Depressive Disorder.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- The MTL200: a surface-based, probabilistic atlas of the medial temporal lobe.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Parallel systems for social and spatial cognition reaching the cortical apex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Mapping macaque to human cortex with natural scene responses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Voice identity invariance by anterior temporal lobe neurons.Science advances · 2025Article
- The neural basis of face pareidolia with human intracerebral recordings.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Linking faces to social cognition: The temporal pole as a potential social switch.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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Abstract
How does the brain process the faces of familiar people? Neuropsychological studies have argued for an area of the temporal pole (TP) linking faces with person identities, but magnetic susceptibility artifacts in this region have hampered its study with fMRI. Using data acquisition and analysis methods optimized to overcome this artifact, we identify a familiar face response in TP, reliably observed in individual brains. This area responds strongly to visual images of familiar faces over unfamiliar faces, objects, and scenes. However, TP did not just respond to images of faces, but also to a variety of high-level social cognitive tasks, including semantic, episodic, and theory of mind tasks. The response profile of TP contrasted with a nearby region of the perirhinal cortex that responded specifically to faces, but not to social cognition tasks. TP was functionally connected with a distributed network in the association cortex associated with social cognition, while PR was functionally connected with face-preferring areas of the ventral visual cortex. This work identifies a missing link in the human face processing system that specifically processes familiar faces, and is well placed to integrate visual information about faces with higher-order conceptual information about other people. The results suggest that separate streams for person and face processing reach anterior temporal areas positioned at the top of the cortical hierarchy.
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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.