Neural representations of faces in the monkey limbic cortices

个人熟悉度被定义为对特定个体的熟悉度，主体与该个体有某种强烈的个人关系。个人熟悉度的一个典型例子是对自己的母亲或父亲。许多先前的研究表明，个人熟悉度在人脸识别中至关重要。然而，个人熟悉度加工的神经基础尚不清楚。在本研究中，为了探讨个人熟悉度加工的神经元基础，我们记录了猴子在被动观看不同个人熟悉度面孔时，其鼻周皮层、扣带回后皮层和脾后皮层的单个神经元活动。结果表明，这些边缘皮层对个人熟悉度具有一定选择性的神经活动，表明它们在个人熟悉度的加工中起着重要作用。

Personal familiarity is defined as the familiarity to a specific individual with whom the subject has some strong personal relationship. A typical example of the personal familiarity is that to mother or father of the subject's own. It has been shown in many previous studies that personal familiarity was critically important in face recognition. However, neural basis for the processing of personal familiarity is not well known. In this study, to investigate neuronal basis of the processing of personal familiarity, single neuronal activity was recorded from the perirhinal, posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortices of monkeys during a passive viewing of various faces which were different in terms of personal familiarity. As the result, neural activities which showed some selectivity to personal familiarity were recorded from these limbic cortices, implying crucial roles of them in the processing of personal familiarity.