Microstimulation of inferotemporal cortex influences face categorization
Microstimulation of inferotemporal cortex influences face categorization
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DOI：
10.1038/nature04982
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发表时间：
2006-08-10
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Esteky, Hossein
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Afraz, Seyed-Reza;Kiani, Roozbeh;Esteky, Hossein
灵长类动物的下颞皮层（IT）被认为是负责物体识别的皮质区域的腹侧视觉区域（1,2）。与该假设一致，单个IT神经元对高度复杂的视觉刺激（例如面部）有选择性反应（3-6）。但是，尚未证明面部选择性神经元和面部感知的活动之间的直接因果关系。在目前对猕猴的研究中，我们通过电化微刺激人为地激活了IT神经元的小簇，而猴子执行了分类任务，判断嘈杂的视觉图像是否属于“ face”还是“非面部”类别。在这里，我们表明面部选择性站点的微刺激，但没有其他站点，强烈偏向猴子对面部类别的决定。效果的大小取决于刺激位点的面部选择性程度，刺激的面部选择性神经元的大小以及微刺激的确切时机。我们的结果在面部选择性神经元的活动与面部感知之间建立了因果关系。
The inferior temporal cortex ( IT) of primates is thought to be the final visual area in the ventral stream of cortical areas responsible for object recognition(1,2). Consistent with this hypothesis, single IT neurons respond selectively to highly complex visual stimuli such as faces(3-6). However, a direct causal link between the activity of face- selective neurons and face perception has not been demonstrated. In the present study of macaque monkeys, we artificially activated small clusters of IT neurons by means of electrical microstimulation while the monkeys performed a categorization task, judging whether noisy visual images belonged to ' face ' or ' non- face' categories. Here we show that microstimulation of face-selective sites, but not other sites, strongly biased the monkeys' decisions towards the face category. The magnitude of the effect depended upon the degree of face selectivity of the stimulation site, the size of the stimulated cluster of face- selective neurons, and the exact timing of microstimulation. Our results establish a causal relationship between the activity of face- selective neurons and face perception.