Behavioural relevance of activity in fusiform face area and anterior temporal lobe in multisensory person identity recognition

Katharina von Kriegstein, Functional Imaging Laboratory, University College London, UK

Abstract
During recognition of familiar persons’ voices activity is enhanced in visual face regions via a direct connection between superior temporal sulcus (STS) voice regions and fusiform face area (FFA). This direct crossmodal activation could be the neural basis for better voice recognition after encoding voices with faces (compared to encoding with names) and for auditory-visual facilitation during person recognition.
Here we report a functional imaging experiment in which the FFA was activated in subjects learning the voices with faces but not in subjects learning voices with names. The FFA activation to voices did however not correlate with the speed of the correct matching of a subsequently presented face. Instead, reaction times correlated with higher activity in left anterior temporal pole. This activation is not significantly different in face and name group suggesting that the anterior temporal lobe serves as a modality unspecific identity node.
These results are in agreement with a previous study showing preserved crossmodal FFA activation and reduced left temporal pole activation in response to a deficit in familiar speaker’s voice recognition in a prospagnosic subject.
We integrate these findings in existing models of person identity recognition where early sensory association in response to familiar speaker’s voices is not sufficient but necessary for speeded unimodal recognition.

Not available

Back to Abstract