What is the fusiform face area in psychology?
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Definition. The fusiform face area (FFA) is a region of the cortex in the inferior temporal lobe of the brain that has been shown to respond most strongly to faces compared with other types of input (e.g., objects) for typically developing individuals.
What is the fusiform face area responsible for?
facial recognition
The fusiform face area (FFA, meaning spindle-shaped face area) is a part of the human visual system (while also activated in people blind from birth) that is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the inferior temporal cortex (IT), in the fusiform gyrus (Brodmann area 37).
Who found the fusiform face area?
FFA. One of the most extensively studied areas in recent years is the fusiform face area (FFA) described first by Sergent et al. (1992), and more recently by Kanwisher et al. (1997).
What is fusiform appearance?
Fusiform means having a spindle-like shape that is wide in the middle and tapers at both ends. It is similar to the lemon-shape, but often implies a focal broadening of a structure that continues from one or both ends, such as an aneurysm on a blood vessel.
Is the fusiform face area Bilateral?
Specifically, the researchers focused on the face-preferential cortical regions (i.e., the bilateral fusiform face area; [FFA, Kanwisher et al., 1997] and the bilateral occipital area [OFA, Gauthier et al., 2000]).
What is Inferotemporal cortex?
inferotemporal cortex (IT cortex) a region of the brain on the inferior (lower) portion of the outer layer (cortex) of the temporal lobe that is particularly involved in the perception of form.
Which part of the brain is most involved in face perception?
fusiform gyrus
The ability to recognize faces is so important in humans that the brain appears to have an area solely devoted to the task: the fusiform gyrus. Brain imaging studies consistently find that this region of the temporal lobe becomes active when people look at faces.
What part of the brain is responsible for recognition?
Temporal Lobe
Temporal Lobe. The temporal lobes contain a large number of substructures, whose functions include perception, face recognition, object recognition, memory, language, and emotion.
Which part of brain is responsible for face recognition?
Face-selective neurons have been found in the amygdala, indicating that this region plays an important role in face recognition (Kosaka et al., 2003). Todorov (2012) proposed that the role of the amygdala in face perception is to motivate the brain to pay attention to novel socially meaningful stimuli (faces).
What area of the brain recognizes faces?
Is the fusiform face area a face-specific brain module?
The fusiform face area (FFA), a region in the inferotemporal cortex, plays an important role in face perception (Duchaine & Yovel, 2015; Kanwisher, McDermott, & Chun, 1997 ). The exact function of this brain region is however debated. On one side of the debate, there is the view that the FFA is exclusively a face-specific brain module.
What is the fusiform face area (FFA)?
One of the most extensively studied areas in recent years is the fusiform face area (FFA). The FFA responds much more strongly to a wide variety of face stimuli (e.g., front view photographs of faces, line drawings of faces, cartoon faces, and upside-down faces) than to various nonface control stimuli (e.g., cars, scrambled faces, houses, hands).
Is the fusiform face area more active during attention to houses?
The Fusiform Face Area was more active during attention to faces than during attention to houses or motion. The Parahippocampal Place Area was more active during attention to houses than to faces or motion. And MT+ was more active during attention to direction of motion than to faces or houses.
Is the FFA face-sensitive?
Daniel N. Albohn, Reginald B. AdamsJr., in Neuroimaging Personality, Social Cognition, and Character, 2016 While the FFA has received considerable attention for being face-sensitive, there are many other areas that are also involved in the visual recognition of faces.