| Paper: | PS-2B.25 |
| Session: | Poster Session 2B |
| Location: | Symphony/Overture |
| Session Time: | Friday, September 7, 19:30 - 21:30 |
| Presentation Time: | Friday, September 7, 19:30 - 21:30 |
| Presentation: |
Poster
|
| Publication: |
2018 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 5-8 September 2018, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Paper Title: |
Task Demands and Stimulus Normalization in Face Perception: an fMRI Study |
| Manuscript: |
Click here to view manuscript |
| DOI: |
https://doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2018.1254-0 |
| Authors: |
Nicholas Blauch, Rosemary Cowell, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, United States |
| Abstract: |
Despite much research demonstrating face selectivity within a core set of brain regions, many questions remain regarding this putative network for face perception, including the role of task demands on processing. A recent study (Kaul et. al, 2014) demonstrated that decodability of face race in a fusiform face-selective area (FFA) was significant for fMRI activation patterns elicited during a team-discrimination task but not during a race-discrimination task. This suggests that cognitive task – specifically, the requirement for facial individuation – may play a significant role in the recruitment of FFA. We sought to replicate this research and extend its conclusions by 1) explicitly manipulating stimulus luminance histogram normalization, to determine whether race-decodability in a given region is attributable to low-level properties, 2) analyzing a range of visual cortical ROIs and applying searchlight analyses to examine face information and the influence of cognitive task in regions lying functionally “between” V1 and FFA, and 3) including a gender task to ask whether the influence of cognitive task applies to all simple, binary discriminations (male/female, black/white), or is instead specific to race discrimination. An initial sample (n=8) yields promising decoding of race and gender and paves the way for hypothesis testing with a full sample. |
