Facephenes and rainbows: Causal evidence for functional and anatomical specificity of face and color processing in the human brain
Abstract
Are some regions of the human brain exclusively engaged in a single specific mental process? Here we test this question in a neurosurgery patient implanted with electrodes for clinical reasons. When electrically stimulated in the fusiform face area while viewing objects, the patient reported illusory faces while the objects remained unchanged. When stimulated in nearby color-preferring sites, he reported seeing rainbows. The fact that stimulation of face-selective sites affected only face percepts and stimulation of color-preferring sites affected only color percepts, in both cases independent of the object being viewed, supports the view that some regions of cortex are indeed exclusively causally engaged in a single mental process and highlights the risks entailed in standard interpretations of neural decoding results.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Oct 30, 2017
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1713447114
Entities
People
- Christoph Guger
- Christoph Kapeller
- Gerwin Schalk
- Hiroshi Ogawa
- Kyousuke Kamada
- Nancy Kanwisher
- Rosa Lafer-sousa
- Satoru Hiroshima
- Zeynep M. Saygin
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Asahikawa Medical University
- Johannes Kepler University Linz
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
- National Institute of Mental Health