Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Genes and behaviour
- Part II Brain development
- Part III New ways of imaging the brain
- Part VI Imaging the normal and abnormal mind
- 7 Functional neuro-imaging and models of normal brain function
- 8 Functional magnetic resonance imaging in psychiatry: where are we now and where are we going?
- 9 Positron emission tomography (PET) neurochemistry: where are we now and where are we going?
- Part V Consciousness and will
- Part IV Recent advances in dementia
- Part VII Affective illness
- Part VIII Aggression
- Part IX Drug use and abuse
- Index
- Plate section
- References
7 - Functional neuro-imaging and models of normal brain function
from Part VI - Imaging the normal and abnormal mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2010
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Genes and behaviour
- Part II Brain development
- Part III New ways of imaging the brain
- Part VI Imaging the normal and abnormal mind
- 7 Functional neuro-imaging and models of normal brain function
- 8 Functional magnetic resonance imaging in psychiatry: where are we now and where are we going?
- 9 Positron emission tomography (PET) neurochemistry: where are we now and where are we going?
- Part V Consciousness and will
- Part IV Recent advances in dementia
- Part VII Affective illness
- Part VIII Aggression
- Part IX Drug use and abuse
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Introduction
Functional neuro-imaging techniques provide an unparalleled window on the living human brain. Using neuro-imaging techniques it has, for the first time, become possible to address fundamental questions regarding the neurobiological underpinnings of core human psychological functions, such as memory, attention and emotion. The present chapter will illustrate basic principles of normal brain function by considering how the brain processes a particular class of object, namely the human face. This example will be used to illustrate two distinct, though complementary, modes of brain function involving functional specialization and functional integration respectively. Evidence for functional specialization, a fundamental principle of brain organization, will be illustrated by consideration of neuro-imaging studies which show that a circumscribed region of inferior temporal cortex, the fusiform cortex, is selectively responsive to presentation of faces relative to other classes of objects. By contrast, functional integration, the idea that during complex psychological functions there is coordination of activity among functionally specialized brain regions, will be illustrated by considering the influence of selective attention and emotional content on patterns of activation in functionally specialized regions that mediate face processing.
Functional specialization
Humans are remarkably adept at recognizing individuals by their faces, an ability that may rely on specialized neural circuits (Bruce and Young 1986). Findings from ‘prosopagnosic’ brain-damaged patients with deficient face processing (Damasio et al. 1982), as well as physiological data from nonhuman primates (Rolls 1992), have now been supplemented by functional imaging results.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Disorders of Brain and Mind , pp. 151 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
References
and (1984). Amygdalo-cortical projections in the monkey (Macaca fascicularis). J Comp Neurol, 230, 465–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amaral D G, Price J L, Pitkanen A and Carmichael S T (1992). Anatomical organization of the primate amygdaloid complex. In The Amygdala: Neurobiological Aspects of Emotion, Memory and Mental Dysfunction, ed. J Aggleton, pp. 1–66. New York: Wiley-Liss
and (2001). Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of emotionally salient events. Nature, 411(6835), 305–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armony J and LeDoux J (2000). How danger is encoded: towards a systems, cellular, and computational understanding of cognitive-emotional interactions in fear. In The New Cognitive Neurosciences, ed. M Gazzaniga. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
and (1997). Neurocomputational bases of object and face recognition. Philos Trans R Soc London B Biol Sci, 352(1358), 1203–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (1999). Dissociable neural responses to facial expressions of sadness and anger. Brain, 122, 883–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1997). Attentional biases for negative information in induced and naturally occurring dysphoria. Behav Res Ther, 35, 911–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (1996). Response and habituation of the human amygdala during visual processing of facial expression. Neuron, 17, 875–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1987). Neuronal evidence that inferomedial temporal cortex is more important than hippocampus in certain processes underlying recognition memory. Brain Res, 409, 158–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1986). Influences of familiarity on the processing of faces. Perception, 15, 387–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (1998). The functional anatomy of attention to visual motion. A functional MRI study. Brain, 121, 1281–94Google Scholar
(1995). Neural mechanisms for stimulus selection in cortical areas of the macaque subserving object vision. Behav Brain Res, 71, 125–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1998). Responses of neurons in inferior temporal cortex during memory-guided visual search. J Neurophysiol, 80, 2918–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (1990). Attentional modulation of neural processing of shape, color, and velocity in humans. Science, 248, 1556–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1997). Transient and sustained activity in a distributed neural system for human working memory. Nature, 386, 608–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1982). Prosopagnosia: anatomical basis and behavioural mechanisms. Neurology, 32, 331–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1990). Face agnosia and the neural substrates of memory. Annu Rev Neurosci, 13, 89–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (1994). Prosopagnosia can be associated with damage confined to the right hemisphere – an MRI and PET study and a review of the literature. Neuropsychologia, 32, 893–902CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (1997). How the brain learns to see objects and faces in an impoverished context. Nature, 389, 596–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2001). Dynamic representation and generative models of brain function. Brain Res Bull, 54, 273–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (1999). Contrast polarity and face recognition in the human fusiform gyrus. Nat Neurosci, 2, 574–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1999). Fear appears fast: temporal course of startle reflex potentiation in animal subjects. Psychophysiology, 30, 66–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2001). Face repetition effects in implicit and explicit memory tasks. Cereb Cortex (in press)Google Scholar
, , and (1995). The wake-sleep algorithm for unsupervised neural networks. Science, 268, 1158–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1997). The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J Neurosci, 17, 4302–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1998). Mechanisms of directed attention in the human extrastriate cortex as revealed by functional MRI. Science, 282, 108–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1996). Perception and recognition of normal and negative faces: the role of shape from shading and pigmentation cues. Perception, 25, 37–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (1998). Human amygdala activation during conditioned fear acquisition and extinction: a mixed-trial fMRI study. Neuron, 20, 937–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1995). Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. J Exp Psychol: Hum Percept Perform, 21, 451–68Google Scholar
, , and (1990). The lateral amygdaloid nucleus: sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning. J Neurosci, 10, 1062–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1999). Behavioral goals constrain the selection of visual information. Psychol Sci, 10, 522–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1991). A neural mechanism for working and recognition memory in inferior temporal cortex. Science, 254, 1377–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1985). Selective attention gates visual processing in the extrastriate cortex. Science, 229, 782–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , et al. (1996). A differential neural response in the human amygdala to fearful and happy facial expressions. Nature, 383, 812–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (1998 a). A neuromodulatory role for the human amygdala in processing emotional facial expressions. Brain, 121, 47–57Google Scholar
, and (1998 b). Conscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala. Nature, 393, 467–70Google Scholar
, and (1999). A subcortical pathway to the right amygdala mediating unseen fear. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA, 96, 1680–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2001). Differential extrageniculostriate and amygdala responses to presentation of emotional faces in a cortically blind field. Brain, 124, 1241–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1998). Inattentional blindness as a function of proximity to the focus of attention. Perception, 27, 1025–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1995). Preparedness and preattentive associative learning: electrodermal conditioning of masked stimuli. J Psychophysiol, 9, 99–108Google Scholar
and (1991). Automatic vigilance: the attention-grabbing power of negative social information. J Pers Soc Psychol, 61, 380–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1995). Face-sensitive regions in human extrastriate cortex studied by functional MRI. J Neurophysiol, 74, 1192–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1998). How do we select perceptions and actions? Human brain imaging studies. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 353, 1283–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1992). Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying face processing within and beyond the temporal cortical visual areas. Philos Trans R Soc Lond, 335, 11–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1999). Global and fine information coded by single neurons in the temporal visual cortex. Nature, 400, 869–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1995). Functional brain imaging studies of cortical mechanisms for memory. Science, 270, 769–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2001 a). Beware and be aware: capture of spatial attention by fear-related stimuli in neglect. Neuroreport, 12, 1119–22Google Scholar
, , , , and (1998). Masked presentations of emotional facial expressions modulate amygdala activity without explicit knowledge. J Neurosci, 18, 411–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (1995). Face processing impairments after amygdalotomy. Brain, 118, 15–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar