Center for Behavioral Decision Research

CBDR : Seminar Series : Seminar by Marlene Behrmann

Let's face it: Psychological and neural mechanisms of face processing

	presented by Marlene Behrmann (CMU Psyhology)


	Tuesday, April 29	link to paper
	Noon - 1:15
	Porter 223D	link to Speaker's Site

	Abstract:

	The extent to which faces engage different, perhaps, dedicated psychological and neural mechanisms from those engaged by non-face objects remains highly debated. While some claim that faces are 'special', others suggest that more general-purpose visual processes are used for all visual stimuli but that faces place additional demands on these common systems. I will examine behavioral and MRI (structural and functional) evidence from three different neuropsychological populations as well as data from a developmental study to address this controversy, and will demonstrate that faces are not special per se but that they invoke configural processing to a greater degree than any other object class because of the need for individual level identification. I will also present data to show that face (and other object) processing engages a distributed neural network and that the 'fusiform face area' is not sufficient for face processing. These findings favor an interactive and dynamic set of neural and behavioral processes which come to be optimized for stimuli which are highly frequent and of evolutionary significance for the observer.

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