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Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Visual Analysis of Faces

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Advances in Vertebrate Neuroethology

Part of the book series: NATO Advanced Science Institutes Series ((NSSA,volume 56))

Abstract

Faces provide an extremely important visual medium in the social interactions of primate species generally (Redican, 1975; Ekman and Oster, 1978). It may not be surprising, therefore, that in the primate brain neural mechanisms should exist which are specialized to process the complex visual patterns of faces. Such a view is, however, controversial (Ellis, 1975). This paper will discuss recent neurophysiological findings which bear upon this issue. A substantial number of neurons in a specific region of the temporal lobe of macaque monkey brains have been found to be particularly responsive to the sight of faces (Perrett et al., 979, 1982; Bruce et al., 1981). A second line of evidence which bears upon the issue of face specific processing comes from clinical studies of brain damaged human patients who suffer a disability in their perception and recognition of faces. This clinical literature has been reviewed elsewhere (Meadows, 1974; Hecean and Albert, 1978; Benton, 1980; Damasio et al., 1981) and will be only briefly covered here.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK

    David I. Perrett & Edmund T. Rolls

Authors
  1. David I. Perrett
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  2. Edmund T. Rolls
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kassel, Kassel, Federal Republic of Germany

    Jörg-Peter Ewert

  2. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Robert R. Capranica

  3. Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

    David J. Ingle

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© 1983 Plenum Press, New York

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Perrett, D.I., Rolls, E.T. (1983). Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Visual Analysis of Faces. In: Ewert, JP., Capranica, R.R., Ingle, D.J. (eds) Advances in Vertebrate Neuroethology. NATO Advanced Science Institutes Series, vol 56. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4412-4_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4412-4_24

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-4414-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-4412-4

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