Individuating faces and common objects produces equal responses in putative face-processing areas in ventral occipitotemporal cortex (Haist et al., 2010)
Here is an article on face and object processing. It is easy to get lost and confused in technical details, so we’ll focus mainly on the intro, the stimuli and individuation task in the methods, the individuation task results, and the discussion.
1. What are the two main theories about the face recognition in the brain that the study is trying to compare? What do the authors think has been missing from prior studies that have tried to compare these theories?
2. What were the different kinds of stimuli used in the individuation task? Why do you think they used each of these stimuli?
3. Describe the individuation task subjects had to do while being scanned. Why did the authors use this task, specifically?
4. Now consider the BOLD response obtained from scanning during the individuation task in the FFA, OFA, and LOC – How did the bold responses to different stimuli compare to each other in each of these areas?
5. Which of the two theoretical accounts from #1 do the results support the best? If the other theory was correct, how should the BOLD responses in FFA and OFA have looked like?
6. Now forget brain scanning for a moment, and think about a patient with prosopagnosia and a patient with visual agnosia. What problems would each patient normally have regarding object vs. face recognition? Suppose we had the patients perform an individuation judgment for faces and objects like in the present study -- would that change anything in terms of how the patients perform?