IST Distinguished Lecture - April 10

Stephen José Hanson:
Brain Reading in the Human Visual Pathways: Why there is no FACE area in the brain


 Friday, April 10, 2015, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. 113 IST Building (Cybertorium) 


In this talk, I will present some basics of fMRI methods, and provide a tutorial context for the acquisition of the MR signal which will allow us to critically examine the evidence for a FACE area in the brain. Using the new methods for "brain reading" developed jointly with the Haxby Lab (MPVA/PD), we will show that the so called FFA is not sensitive to faces, per se; Nor is it homogenous in its stimulus response properties (even at very high spatial resolution); Nor is it independent in its function relative to the other areas of the brain that comprise an identifiable network which appears to do something other than "FACE" identification. In fact, we will show that the highly distributed nature of the computation in temporal lobe and throughout cortex is unlikely to support anything like a local module for a specific concept or category. Nonetheless, once the distributed encoding is properly decoded, basic categorical distinctions in the temporal cortex, such as Animacy, can be revealed.