Dear Users

Today (starting 4.30 pm in YNiC open plan) there will a project proposal presentation given by Tessa Flack on "Dissociating Expression and Viewpoint Changes in the Human Brain". Please see below for the talk abstract.

Everyone is welcome to attend and refreshments will be provided afterwards.

Best wishes Rebecca

Abstract: Models of face processing propose that changeable aspects of faces, such as expression and viewpoint, are considered to be processed independently of facial identity (Bruce and Young, 2011; Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000). Neuroimaging studies have shown that the processing of facial expression and viewpoint initially occurs in face-selective regions of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). This information, which plays an important role in social communication, is then relayed to other regions in the extended face processing network, such as the amygdala and regions in the frontal and parietal lobes. This project will investigate how information about the expression and viewpoint of faces is represented in the human brain. In a previous study, using multivariate pattern analyses, we showed distinct patterns of response to facial expression and viewpoint. These topographic patterns suggest a coarse scale neural representation of facial expression and viewpoint in face-selective regions. The aim of the current experiment is to use a fMR-adaptation paradigm to more directly address the neural coding underlying the processing of facial expression and viewpoint. Specifically, we will ask the following questions: (1) Is adaptation to facial expression invariant to changes in viewpoint? (2) Is adaptation to facial viewpoint invariant to changes in expression?