Department of Cognitive Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research , 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Department of Cognitive Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; Graduate School of Neural and Behavioural Sciences, University of Tübingen, 72074 Tübingen, Germany; International Max Planck Research School for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, 72074 Tübingen, Germany.
eNeuro. 2017 Mar 23;4(2). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0317-16.2017. eCollection 2017 Mar-Apr.
Humans follow another person's eye gaze to objects of interest to the other, thereby establishing joint attention, a first step toward developing a theory of the other's mind. Previous functional MRI studies agree that a "gaze-following patch" (GFP) of cortex close to the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is specifically implicated in eye gaze-following. The location of the GFP is in the vicinity of the posterior members of the core face-processing system that consists of distinct patches in ventral visual cortex, the STS, and frontal cortex, also involved in processing information on the eyes. To test whether the GFP might correspond to one of the posterior face patches, we compared the pattern of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) imaging contrasts reflecting the passive vision of static faces with the one evoked by shifts of attention guided by the eye gaze of others. The viewing of static faces revealed the face patch system. On the other hand, eye gaze-following activated a cortical patch (the GFP) with its activation maximum separated by more than 24 mm in the right and 19 mm in the left hemisphere from the nearest face patch, the STS face area (FA). This segregation supports a distinct function of the GFP, different from the elementary processing of facial information.
人类会跟随他人的目光注视到对方感兴趣的物体，从而建立共同注意力，这是发展他人心理理论的第一步。先前的功能性磁共振成像研究一致认为，后上颞叶回（STS）附近的一个“注视追随区”（GFP）特别参与了目光追随。GFP 的位置靠近核心面部处理系统的后部成员，该系统由腹侧视觉皮层、STS 和额叶皮层中的不同斑块组成，也参与处理有关眼睛的信息。为了测试 GFP 是否可能对应于后部面部斑块之一，我们比较了反映被动观察静态面部的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）成像对比模式与由他人的目光引导的注意力转移引起的激活模式。静态面部观察揭示了面部斑块系统。另一方面，注视追随激活了一个皮层斑块（GFP），其激活最大值在右侧与最近的面部斑块（STS 面部区域）相隔超过 24 毫米，在左侧与最近的面部斑块相隔超过 19 毫米。这种分离支持 GFP 的独特功能，与面部信息的基本处理不同。
