Sugase Y, Yamane S, Ueno S, Kawano K
Electrotechnical Laboratory, Umezono, Tsukuba, Japan.
Nature. 1999 Aug 26;400(6747):869-73. doi: 10.1038/23703.
When we see a person's face, we can easily recognize their species, individual identity and emotional state. How does the brain represent such complex information? A substantial number of neurons in the macaque temporal cortex respond to faces. However, the neuronal mechanisms underlying the processing of complex information are not yet clear. Here we recorded the activity of single neurons in the temporal cortex of macaque monkeys while presenting visual stimuli consisting of geometric shapes, and monkey and human faces with various expressions. Information theory was used to investigate how well the neuronal responses could categorize the stimuli. We found that single neurons conveyed two different scales of facial information in their firing patterns, starting at different latencies. Global information, categorizing stimuli as monkey faces, human faces or shapes, was conveyed in the earliest part of the responses. Fine information about identity or expression was conveyed later, beginning on average 51 ms after global information. We speculate that global information could be used as a 'header' to prepare destination areas for receiving more detailed information.
当我们看到一个人的脸时，我们能够轻易识别他们的物种、个人身份和情绪状态。大脑是如何呈现如此复杂的信息的呢？猕猴颞叶皮质中有相当数量的神经元对面部做出反应。然而，处理复杂信息背后的神经元机制尚不清楚。在这里，我们在呈现由几何形状、带有各种表情的猴子和人脸组成的视觉刺激时，记录了猕猴颞叶皮质中单个神经元的活动。信息论被用于研究神经元反应对刺激进行分类的能力。我们发现，单个神经元在其放电模式中传递了两种不同尺度的面部信息，起始潜伏期不同。将刺激分类为猴子脸、人脸或形状的全局信息在反应的最早阶段被传递。关于身份或表情的精细信息稍后被传递，平均在全局信息出现后51毫秒开始。我们推测，全局信息可以用作“标题”，为接收更详细信息的目标区域做好准备。
