Sparse population coding of faces in the inferotemporal cortex.

How does the brain represent objects in the world? A proportion of cells in the temporal cortex of monkeys responds specifically to objects, such as faces, but the type of coding used by these cells is not known. Population analysis of two sets of such cells showed that information is carried at the level of the population and that this information relates, in the anterior inferotemporal cortex, to the physical properties of face stimuli and, in the superior temporal polysensory area, to other aspects of the faces, such as their familiarity. There was often sufficient information in small populations of neurons to identify particular faces. These results suggest that representations of complex stimuli in the higher visual areas may take the form of a sparse population code.

[1]  P. Schönemann,et al.  Fitting one matrix to another under choice of a central dilation and a rigid motion , 1970 .

[2]  R N Shepard,et al.  Multidimensional Scaling, Tree-Fitting, and Clustering , 1980, Science.

[3]  A P Georgopoulos,et al.  On the relations between the direction of two-dimensional arm movements and cell discharge in primate motor cortex , 1982, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[4]  A. J. Mistlin,et al.  Neurones responsive to faces in the temporal cortex: studies of functional organization, sensitivity to identity and relation to perception. , 1984, Human neurobiology.

[5]  E. Rolls,et al.  Selectivity between faces in the responses of a population of neurons in the cortex in the superior temporal sulcus of the monkey , 1985, Brain Research.

[6]  H. Barlow.  The Twelfth Bartlett Memorial Lecture: The Role of Single Neurons in the Psychology of Perception , 1985, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[7]  A. P. Georgopoulos,et al.  Neuronal population coding of movement direction. , 1986, Science.

[8]  A. J. Mistlin,et al.  Visual neurones responsive to faces , 1987, Trends in Neurosciences.

[9]  G. Rhodes.  Looking at Faces: First-Order and Second-Order Features as Determinants of Facial Appearance , 1988, Perception.

[10]  J. T. Massey,et al.  Mental rotation of the neuronal population vector. , 1989, Science.

[11]  M. Hasselmo,et al.  The role of expression and identity in the face-selective responses of neurons in the temporal visual cortex of the monkey , 1989, Behavioural Brain Research.

[12]  S. Lehky,et al.  Neural model of stereoacuity and depth interpolation based on a distributed representation of stereo disparity [published erratum appears in J Neurosci 1991 Mar;11(3):following Table of Contents] , 1990, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.