Face Perception and Greebles

Week 1: Face Perception and Greebles

• The face composite effect shows mandatory processing of entire faces
• The part-whole effect suggests faces undergo holistic processing
• Dog experts exhibit an inversion effect when viewing images of dogs
• Greebles, unlike other objects, can be recognized at individual levels, similar to faces
• Greeble expertise requires the ability to identify them by name, gender, and family
• Face recognition tests involve ordering faces by similarity
• Developmental prosopagnosia and super recognizers indicate natural variation in face processing ability
• Green learning by a prosopagnosic offers evidence that Greebles are not recognized like faces
• Stimulation of individual face neurons in macaques biases face perception
• MRI responses in the fusiform face area are stronger for three-quarter-view face photos than hand photos
• Studies of Greebles did not include evidence of low MRI activation to faces in Greeble experts
• Electrical brain stimulation using an ECoG array showed that face perception alteration sites were more face-selective
• Arguments for specialized face neurons are not based on evidence of prosopagnosia in the absence of trauma
• Biasing of flower judgments towards faces happens with stimulation of neurons in the inferotemporal cortex of monkeys
• The medial temporal lobe's neuronal response corresponds to abstract representation of specific people
• High-frequency components of ECoG responses in the ventral temporal cortex correlate with fMRI responses

Week 2: fMRI and Brain Stimulation

• Magnetic susceptibility of blood depends on changes in blood oxygenation
• fMRI has a limitation in relatively slow change in signal
• Improved temporal resolution of hemodynamics is not related to recent advances in MRI
• Neural activity leads to an increase in both oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin
• The amplitude of the BOLD signal isn't associated with Myelin Density
• A significant BOLD signal in a brain region during a task suggests that the region is active during the task
• The rotation axis of water molecules aligns with strong magnetic fields is not true of MRI
• Brain connectivity studies reveal prominent pathways between brain regions
• Extracellular recording research is based mostly on action potentials generated in single neurons
• Strength of EEG signals does not depend on the cortical lobe of origin
• Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is preferred due to its low cost and ease of use
• Extracellular recording is not commonly used in humans because it is invasive and has limited clinical application
• Electrocorticography (ECoG) signal has been attributed to pyramidal cell activity
• Electrocorticography (ECoG) can be performed as part of ongoing investigations of epilepsy which is its main advantage
• Electroencephalography (EEG) might not capture all types of neural activity which is its main limitation
• A less serious problem with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) literature is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms

Week 3: Emotional Processing

• Genetics studies are not included within the arguments that recognizing facial emotion is innate
• The anger superiority effect relies on low-level features in some stimuli of faces
• Studies suggest that emotional expression isn't distinguishable from recognition processes completely
• During perception of joy the amygdala is not active
• There is independence of facial expression and facial recognition
• Prosopagnosics have a reduced ability to classify facial expressions using information from the eyes
• Different facial expressions cause dynamic changes in muscle activity are faster for evolutionarily important expressions
• A factor that is not associated with amygdala damage is the inability to identify fearful expressions
• Non-human primates (Ayumu) are capable of basic arithmetic
• Studies of the Munduruku in the Amazon indicate that culture shapes our representation of numbers
• Crossmodal number comparison studies reveal that non-symbolic number systems can support basic arithmetic
• Dyscalculia is not included in the arguments for an innate non-verbal number mechanism

Week 4: Numerical Cognition

• People with dyscalculia are unable to determine a number's value relative to other numbers
• The intraparietal sulcus is the key brain structure implicated in dyscalculia
• Adaptation to dot arrays reduces BOLD responses with tuning that has a gaussian shape on a log scale of numerosity
• MRI adaptation in human number studies has not been found for stimuli that are numerically distant
• Neural responses to object sequences are consistent with abstract number processing
• Relatively few IPS neurons code for both line length ratio and dot numerosity
• Neural responses to learned symbolic stimuli in the prefrontal cortex of monkeys are dependent on the visual stimulus mode
• Studies that use Electrocorticography (ECoG) show number responses which are dependent on the visual stimulus mode, in the inferior temporal gyrus

Week 8: Amygdala and Emotional Responses

• Amygdala blocks the ability to acquire and express a conditioned response to a neutral stimulus therefore damage impairs conditioned fear responses
• Inability to identify fearful expressions is not associated with amygdala damage
• A subcortical pathway where crude visual information projected to the thalamus signals the amygdala when the stimulus appears aversive is the 'low road' visual pathway for an aversive stimulus
• Amygdala is thought to contribute to the learning of explicit fear memories by modulating arousal to emotional events, and thereby memory for them
• Amygdala responds most strongly to fearful faces
• The wide range of emotional stimuli responses in the insula cortex been interpreted to originate from afferent or interoceptive feelings from the body
• Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) are behavioral variants characterized by reduced insight
• Impaired recognition of emotion, specifically negative emotions can summarize the change in emotion processing in (FTD)
• The amygdala is associated with damage to which cortical region where patients with FTD impairment test show in sarcastic statements
• In the 2008 lozano open-label trial, varying dosage across patients to reduce the influence of placebo effects