The discoveries in non-human primates may provide insight into how our brains learn to recognize faces.
Researchers have discovered a brain circuit in monkeys that allows for quick facial detection. The findings have implications for understanding diseases like autism, where face detection and recognition are commonly impaired from an early age, in addition to helping to explain how primates sense and remember faces. The recently found circuit initially stimulates the superior colliculus a region of the brain that dates back millions of years. This can cause the head and eyes to turn in order to get a better look. This improved vision makes it possible for various temporal cortex brain regions to do more intricate facial recognition. The journal Neuron published the study.
The ability to recognize faces quickly is essential for both humans and other primates. We can swiftly identify and focus on faces even if they initially appear in the periphery visual field, where visual acuity is low, thanks to this recently identified circuit. This circuit may be the source of the spotlighting of faces which aids in the development of critical social interaction abilities by teaching the brain to identify faces and decipher complicated facial emotions.
Adult primates’ brains acquire “face patches,” which are specific temporal cortex regions that allow for individual recognition and differentiation based on facial traits. However facial recognition relies on the fine details that the eye’s high acuity central vision provides; we must gaze straight at a face in order to recognize it.
Face-specific regions of the cortex do not develop until later in life, and babies are born without the high acuity vision necessary to perceive the minute details of faces. Nonetheless, newborns typically learn to orient and gaze at faces fairly early on, indicating that another process is at work.
These findings raised a number of problems for scientists, one of which being how the brain directs the eyes toward a face in order to improve vision of minute details. What causes this preference for one face before the “face patches” in the brain form? And how do the “face patches” in the brain initially get to be able to recognize faces?
Fit Bulk and associates postulated that the superior colliculus—which is capable of detecting objects—might be the missing piece. A portion of the midbrain serves as a relay to the rest of the brain when something is present; it does not specify what the object is, only that it exists. It works incredibly fast and has a direct connection to the brain’s motor regions, causing the eyes to travel toward objects of interest or to recoil away from objects in the periphery.
To find out if the superior colliculus could be especially useful for face identification we collected a set of images that comprised both biological non-facial objects like hands and limbs and faces.
includes extra items such as manufactured goods or fruit. They observed the neuronal responses of the superior colliculus after displaying these images to adult monkeys inside their peripheral field of vision.
According to earlier research the superior colliculus is an object-agnostic detector, which means that it simply registers the existence or absence of an object without making any distinctions about what the object might be. But in our study, we discovered that over half of the examined neurons reacted more strongly to images of faces than to other kinds of things within 40 milliseconds. It took 100 milliseconds for some extra neurons to eventually show preferences for different kinds of things.In other words, a significant percentage of the observed neurons preferred face specific detection which was significantly faster than object detection.
Additionally the researchers discovered that although the superior colliculus can receive visual information directly from the eye the early visual cortex must first provide input to the visual cortex in order for object detection to occur.
As the visual cortex and superior colliculus re-connect later in the visual processing pathway, scientists surmise that this circuit serves as a method for emphasizing the significance of particular items.
“We propose that the evolution of the brain’s more sophisticated facial recognition processes may be driven by this face-preference circuit,” If this is the case, autism may be influenced by deficiencies in this superior colliculus face preference.
This news release presents a fundamental research discovery. In order to develop new and improved methods for illness prevention, diagnosis and treatment, basic research broadens our understanding of human behavior and biology. Science works in unforeseen and incremental ways each new study builds on earlier findings in novel ways. Without an understanding of essential basic research, the majority of medicinal advancements would not be feasible.
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