Lecture 7 Flashcards
Which aspect of modularity have we looked at in detail for this lecture/ course?
Is there a face specific module
What are 5 points in favour for humans having a face specific module?
We all seem very good at it
Process it different to other objects, the inversion effect, the contrast effect
It’s socially Important to humans to remember faces
We have super recognisers
Babies show preference for face
What did haxby (2000) show in terms of a face perception experiment?
Showed that there was more activation in specific area of the brain in relation to faces that didn’t occur for other things like houses and animals
Who conducted a study that looked at the inversion effect in faces?
Yin (1969)
Who conducted a study looking at the contrast effect in faces?
Galper (1970)
What are the two hypothesis for modularity to do with faces ?
Face specific module hypothesis expertise hypothesis
What is the face specific module hypothesis ?
Faces are a special class of stimuli, brains are hard-wires to process them Therefore there are dedicated regions in the brain for processing faces and only faces
What is the expertise hypothesis ?
The brain LEARNS to deal with faces because they are socially important
Therefore we are face experts
So we have dedicated brain areas that process objects of expertise
Who studied greebles?
Gauthier (1999)
What happened with the greebles study? What conclusion does it draw?
When trained with greebles enough people started to show the inversion effect. They also, at the beginning, showed no brain activation. But with further training they began to show more and more of an activation in the lateral occipital gyrus when shown greebles.
Suggests support for the expert hypothesis because they learned to attend to greebles
What’s another piece of evidence for the expert hypothesis ?
Crufts judges show activation in the FFA for objects of expertise like Labradors
There are hemispheric differences In what is processed. What does the LH process?
What is processed bilaterally?
What is processed by the RH?
LH - processing visual words
Bilateral - non face, non word stimuli like animals and cars
RH - face perception, especially familiar faces. This is done by the left as well but mostly by the right.
What is evidence against the face specific module hypothesis ? Highlighted by Thomas (2009)
Congenital prosopagnosia
All the cortical areas and the brain are fine with no damage
But they are born with very poor face recognition areas.
What is an explanation for why congenital prosopagnosics can’t recognise faces, even though cortically they aren’t impaired?
Argument that there are reduced White matter pathways as shown by diffuse tensor imagining. The reduction is in the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus which is important for connecting early visual information with more anterior systems like the anterior temporal lobe (FFA)
The idea that congenital prosopagnosia comes from White matter lesions is an argument for or against modularity and why?
Against because it is the connections between the areas of the brain that are important rather than the single module of the brain that does all the work
