Visual experience is not necessary for the development of face-selectivity in the lateral fusiform gyrus
Name
23011.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.45 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3e44b25f932c64029db6921ba98352bf
Author(s)
Ratan Murty, N Apurva
Teng, Santani
Beeler, David
Mynick, Anna
Oliva, Aude
Kanwisher, Nancy
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. The fusiform face area responds selectively to faces and is causally involved in face perception. How does face-selectivity in the fusiform arise in development, and why does it develop so systematically in the same location across individuals? Preferential cortical responses to faces develop early in infancy, yet evidence is conflicting on the central question of whether visual experience with faces is necessary. Here, we revisit this question by scanning congenitally blind individuals with fMRI while they haptically explored 3D-printed faces and other stimuli. We found robust face-selective responses in the lateral fusiform gyrus of individual blind participants during haptic exploration of stimuli, indicating that neither visual experience with faces nor fovea-biased inputs is necessary for face-selectivity to arise in the lateral fusiform gyrus. Our results instead suggest a role for long-range connectivity in specifying the location of face-selectivity in the human brain.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/PNAS.2004607117
