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The Journal of Neuroscience, January 15, 2000, 20(2):878-886
Neural Systems Underlying the Recognition of Familiar and Newly
Learned Faces
Catherine L.
Leveroni1, 2,
Michael
Seidenberg1,
Andrew
R.
Mayer1, 2,
Larissa A.
Mead2,
Jeffrey R.
Binder2, and
Stephen M.
Rao2
1 Department of Psychology, Finch University of Health
Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, Illinois 60064, and
2 Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53226
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ABSTRACT |
Memory for famous faces can be used to examine the neural systems
underlying retrieval from long-term memory. To date, there have been a
limited number of functional neuroimaging investigations examining
famous face recognition. In this study, we compared recognition of
famous faces to recognition of newly learned faces. Whole-brain,
event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to image
regional changes in neural activity in 11 subjects during the encoding
of unfamiliar faces and during familiarity judgments for: (1) newly
learned faces, (2) unfamiliar face distractors, and (3) famous faces.
Image analyses were restricted to correct recognition trials.
Recognition accuracy and response time to famous and recently learned
faces were equivalent. Recognition of famous faces was associated with
a widespread network of bilateral brain activations involving the
prefrontal, lateral temporal, and mesial temporal (hippocampal and
parahippocampal regions) regions compared to recognition of recently
encoded faces or unfamiliar faces seen for the first time. Findings are
discussed in relation to current proposals concerning the neural
regions thought to participate in long-term memory retrieval and, more
specifically, in relation to retrieval of information from the person
identity semantic system.
Key words:
event-related fMRI; famous faces; frontal; temporal; hippocampus; recognition memory; person-identity system; memory; face
recognition; temporofrontal cortex
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INTRODUCTION |
The successful retrieval of
information from long-term memory requires the integrated activity of
multiple brain regions. Current proposals, based primarily on findings
from the human lesion literature, have focused on the role of the
hippocampus and the temporofrontal region in long-term memory retrieval
(Squire and Alvarez, 1995 ; Nadel and Moscovitch, 1997 ; Kroll et al.,
1997 ). The specific neural system engaged varies with the nature of the stimuli examined (verbal or nonverbal), the time frame of initial acquisition (recent or remote), and the type of information retrieved from long-term memory (personal or public). In the human lesion literature, the recognition and identification of famous faces has
commonly been used to study the neural regions critical for retrieval
of information from long-term memory (Warrington and James, 1967 ;
Marslen-Wilson and Teuber, 1975 ; Albert et al., 1979 ; Warrington and
McCarthy, 1988 ; Barr et al., 1990 ; Greene and Hodges, 1996 ;
Rempel-Clower et al., 1996 ).
It is generally acknowledged that famous faces produce automatic
retrieval of person-identity information from long-term memory (Bruce
and Young, 1986 ; Burton et al., 1990 ). Thus, the comparison of famous
and unfamiliar faces provides an opportunity to examine the neural
systems activated when pre-existing semantic and biographical information is available for retrieval. Neuroimaging studies of memory
for unfamiliar faces have demonstrated right hippocampal activation
during encoding, but no hippocampal activity during subsequent
recognition (Grady et al., 1995 ; Haxby et al., 1996 ; Clark et al.,
1998 ). Memory for unfamiliar faces has also produced frontal
activation, although the side of activation has differed across
studies. Haxby et al. (1996) found left frontal activation during
encoding, whereas Kelley et al. (1998) observed increased right frontal activation.
Three PET studies of famous face recognition have suggested that the
retrieval of person-specific semantic information involves more
extensive frontotemporal activation than unfamiliar face recognition;
however, the results across studies have not been entirely consistent.
Sergent et al. (1992) found that occupation categorization (actor/not
actor) produced activation of the right parahippocampal area and
bilateral activation in the anterior temporal and orbitofrontal
regions. In contrast, left hippocampal activity was observed in another
categorization task involving famous faces (Kapur et al., 1995 ). More
recently, Tempini et al. (1998) found extensive left-sided activation
of the frontal and temporal regions with no increased activity in the
medial temporal region when subjects were asked to match famous faces.
The divergent results may be attributable in part to differences in
face processing (matching vs categorization) and control (rest vs
gender classification) tasks.
We present findings from a whole-brain, event-related functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that directly compared the
recognition of newly learned, unfamiliar faces with the recognition of
well known faces. This study was designed to contrast activation patterns resulting from: (1) famous face recognition with recognition of newly learned faces and unfamiliar faces not previously encountered, and (2) newly learned unfamiliar faces with those for unfamiliar faces
not been previously encoded.
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MATERIALS AND METHODS |
Subjects. Eleven healthy, right-handed volunteers
(five male and six female; mean age, 32.0; range, 25-36) were studied.
Subjects were all strongly right-handed (mean laterality quotient,
97.5; range, 88-100) on the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971 ). Subjects were excluded if they had a history of neurological disease, major psychiatric disturbance, substance abuse, or were taking
psychoactive prescriptive medications. Informed consent was obtained
from subjects according to institutional guidelines established by the
Medical College of Wisconsin Human Subjects Review Committee. Subjects
were compensated for their time.
Experimental task. The stimuli consisted of 150 black and
white photos of adult faces (e.g., models) digitally scanned from books
and magazines. Luminance and contrast were adjusted to make the images
as comparable as possible; dimensions of the photos were interpolated
to 240 × 240 pixels. One hundred of the faces were unfamiliar.
Male and female faces were equally represented and covered a wide age
distribution. Half of the unfamiliar faces (n = 50)
were seen twice; once during both the encoding and retrieval conditions
(see below). The other half (n = 50) were used as foils and were seen only one time during the retrieval condition. The remaining 50 faces consisted of pictures of well-known entertainers, politicians, and sports figures. As in the unfamiliar faces, males and
females were equally represented and covered a wide age range. The
famous faces were drawn from a time period that spanned the 1970s,
1980s, and early 1990s. During the inactive period between face
presentations, subjects were asked to maintain visual fixation on a
small centrally located black box presented within a scrambled face.
The scrambled image provided control for luminance of the visual
display. A trial consisted of a single face stimulus presentation for
2.5 sec followed by a 12.5 sec visual fixation period.
All visual stimuli were computer-generated and rear-projected onto the
center of an opaque screen located at the subject's feet (viewing
distance, 200 cm). Face and fixation stimuli subtended a 4 × 4°
visual angle. Subjects viewed the screen in a darkened room through
prism glasses and corrective lenses, if necessary. A nonferrous
keypress device made from force-sensing resistors was used to record
response times and accuracy.
For the encoding (EN) condition, 50 unfamiliar faces were presented in
random order. Subjects were instructed to remember the faces because
they would later be asked to identify them. To aid with encoding,
subjects were asked to make a judgment about the pleasantness of the
face to enhance recognition memory performance. Subjects recorded their
judgment by pressing one of two keys with the right index finger.
Subjects pressed the left key if the face was judged to be
"pleasant" and the right key if the face was "unpleasant."
Stimuli were presented in two imaging runs of 25 trials each.
The retrieval condition began 12 min after the completion of the second
encoding imaging run. For this condition, 150 faces from the three
stimulus conditions [i.e., famous faces (FF), newly learned (NL)
faces, and foils (FO)] were randomly divided into six functional
imaging runs (25 trials per run). Within each run, faces from the three
stimulus conditions were ordered in a pseudorandom fashion. Subjects
were instructed that one-third of the faces would be famous, another
third would be faces they had seen previously during the encoding
phase, and the final third were new faces. Subjects pressed one of two
keys with their right index finger. If they had seen the face before,
i.e., newly learned or famous, the left button was to be pressed; if
the face was judged to be new, i.e., never seen before, subjects
pressed the right key. Accuracy and response latency to the first
keypress were recorded.
Duration of each of the eight imaging runs (two encoding, six
retrieval) was 6 min, 30 sec.
Functional MRI. Whole-brain, event-related functional MRI
was conducted on a commercial 1.5 Tesla scanner (Signa; General Electric Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI) equipped with a three-axis local gradient head coil and an elliptical endcapped quadrature radiofrequency coil (Medical Advances, Milwaukee, WI). Echoplanar images were collected using a single-shot, blipped, gradient-echo echoplanar pulse sequence [echo time (TE), 40 msec; field of view (FOV), 24 cm; matrix size, 64 × 64]. For the encoding and
retrieval conditions, 17 contiguous sagittal 7-mm-thick slices were
selected to provide coverage of the entire brain (voxel size, 3.75 × 3.75 × 7 mm). The interscan interval [repetition time
(TR)] was 2.5 sec. During each imaging series, 156 sequential
echoplanar images were collected. During the period between the
encoding and retrieval run, high-resolution, three-dimensional spoiled
gradient-recalled at steady-state (SPGR) anatomic images were collected
[TE, 5 msec; TR, 24 msec; 40° flip angle; number of excitations
(NEX), 1; slice thickness, 1.2 or 1.3 mm; FOV, 24 cm; resolution,
256 × 192]. Foam padding was used to limit head motion within
the coil.
Image processing and statistical analysis. Each image time
series was spatially registered in-plane to reduce the effects of head
motion using an iterative linear least-squares method (Keren et al.,
1988 ). Functional images were created by subtracting a local baseline
(fixation) image from an activation image on a trial-by-trial basis.
Specifically, each 15 sec trial consisted of six images. The first and
sixth image (0 and 12.5 sec after stimulus onset, respectively) in each
trial were averaged and referred to as the local baseline image. The
third and fourth images (5.0 and 7.5 sec after stimulus onset) were
averaged to represent the peak evoked change in the hemodynamic
response and referred to as the activation image. The second and fifth
images (2.5 and 10.0 sec after stimulus onset) were not analyzed
because they represent the transitional rise and fall of the evoked
hemodynamic response (Bandettini et al., 1992 ). In the next stage, a
difference image was created for each trial by subtracting the baseline
image from activation image. Thus, a total of 200 difference images were created for each of the four conditions (50 EN, 50 FF, 50 NL, and
50 FO). An average difference image (ADI) was created for each of the
four conditions by averaging all of the individual difference images
within a condition. For the encode condition, the ADI was based on all
trials in which the unfamiliar face was correctly identified during
subsequent recognition testing (NL condition). For the three retrieval
conditions (FF, NL, and FO), only correct trials (recognition of a FF
or NL face or rejection of a FO face) were averaged. Thus, for each
subject, four ADIs were generated per slice.
Individual SPGR anatomical scans and average difference images were
linearly interpolated to volumes with 1 mm3 voxels, co-registered, and transformed
into standard stereotaxic space (Talairach and Tournoux, 1988 ) using
the Medical College of Wisconsin Analysis of Functional Neuroimages
software package (Cox, 1996 ). Functional images were blurred using a 4 mm Gaussian full-width half-maximum filter to compensate for
intersubject variability in anatomic and functional anatomy.
Statistical comparisons were made between the three recognition
conditions (FF, NL, and FO), and between the NL and EN conditions. A
one-way repeated measures ANOVA was applied to the three
retrieval conditions on a voxel-by-voxel basis across the 11 subjects.
This was followed by a pooled variance t test to compare
each of the conditions in a pairwise fashion (FF vs NL; FF vs FO; and
NL vs FO). A cutoff t value of 3.15 (p < 0.005; df = 10) was established as
the threshold for significance. The NL and EN conditions were compared
with a paired t test using the same probability threshold (t = 3.58; p < 0.005; df = 10) as
the retrieval comparisons. A minimum cluster size threshold of 0.2 ml
was applied to minimize false-positive activation foci from the brain maps.
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RESULTS |
Behavioral data
Figure 1A presents
the overall accuracy for recognition of famous (FF) and newly learned
(NL) faces and rejection of foils (FO). Subjects correctly identified
68% of the famous faces and 75% of the newly learned faces;
percentage correct rejection of foils was 94.7% with errors
attributable to missed responses rather than false positives. All
conditions were performed well above chance (>60%), except one
subject who performed at 50% on the NL condition and another subject
who performed at 46% on the FF condition. Repeated measures ANOVA
revealed a significant difference in accuracy across the three
conditions (F(2,20) = 22.68;
p < 0.001). Post hoc analyses (Tukey's
honest significant difference) indicated no significant difference
(p > 0.20) in accuracy between famous and newly
learned faces. Subjects were significantly more accurate at rejecting a
foil than recognizing famous or newly learned faces
(p < 0.001).

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Figure 1.
A, Percentage of correct
recognition of famous faces (FF) and newly
learned (NL) faces and correct rejection of foils
(FO). B, Mean of median reaction
times to FF, NL, and FO face stimuli. Error bars indicate SEM.
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An accuracy/speed trade-off was observed
(F(2,20) = 5.5; p < 0.02; Fig. 1B), with reaction time (RT) for rejecting
a foil being significantly slower than RT for recognizing either famous or newly learned faces (p = 0.05). No
differences in RT were observed between correct recognition of famous
or newly learned faces (p > 0.20).
Activation data
Famous faces versus newly learned faces
The comparison of FF and NL faces yielded the greatest number of
activated brain regions (Table 1).
Recognition of FF stimuli resulted in relatively greater activation
than recognition of NL stimuli. Famous faces produced bilateral
activation of the temporal lobes, with the largest areas of activation
observed in the anterior middle temporal gyrus. Additional areas of
activation extended posteriorly to the temporoparietal junction
bilaterally (Fig. 2). Activation of the
left hippocampus and right parahippocampal gyrus was also observed
(Fig. 3).

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Figure 2.
Areas of significantly increased
(red-yellow scale) and decreased
(blue-cyan scale) MR signal intensity from
t tests (p < 0.005)
comparing the three conditions: FF minus NL, FF minus FO, and NL minus
FO. Numbers below each image represent millimeters from the
interhemispheric fissure ( , left; +, right). Numbers adjacent to
activated foci correspond to location numbers (first column) of Tables
1, 2, and 3.
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Figure 3.
Areas of significant activation within lateral and
medial temporal lobes. Number below images indicates millimeters
posterior to anterior commissure. Numbers adjacent to activated foci
correspond to location numbers (first column) of Tables 1 and 2.
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Widespread areas of activation for FF were also observed in the
prefrontal cortex, including the right anterior cingulate (BA 32),
bilateral medial frontal (BA 9, 10, 11), bilateral superior frontal (BA
8), and right inferior frontal gyri (BA 47) (Table 1, Fig. 3). Greater
activation in the FF condition was also observed in the right and left
posterior cingulate/precuneus (BA 23, 30, 31), right anterior inferior
parietal (BA 40), and left extrastriate (BA 18) regions. Relative
increases in activation (FF > NL) were also observed bilaterally
in the pons and in the right putamen.
Three foci, the right and left posterior inferior parietal (BA 40) and
right posterior parietal (BA 7) regions, were significantly more active
during recognition of NL faces than during FF recognition.
Famous faces versus foils
FF recognition resulted in greater activation within the temporal
lobes relative to the FO stimuli (Table
2, Figs. 2, 3). The areas of activation
were very similar to those observed in the FF > NL comparison
(Fig. 2) and included the bilateral middle temporal (BA 21, 39) and
right superior temporal (BA 22, 38, 41) areas. In contrast to the
comparison with NL faces, activation within the hippocampus was
restricted to the right side (Fig. 3). It should be noted however, that
increased activity was observed in the left hippocampus in the FF > FO comparison, but just missed our statistical cutoff. No activity
was observed within the fusiform area.
Nontemporal lobe activations included a large focus in the left
superior frontal cortex (BA 8) along with smaller foci in the right
superior frontal (BA 8) and left medial frontal (BA 10) regions. In
addition, a large focus was observed in the left posterior
cingulate/precuneus area that extended into the homologous region of
the right hemisphere.
No areas of significantly increased activation were observed in the
foil condition when compared to the famous faces condition.
Newly learned faces versus foils
Retrieval of newly learned faces resulted in activation of the
left medial frontal (BA 6), left inferior parietal (BA 40), and left
precuneus (BA 7) regions relative to the foils condition (Table
3, Fig. 2). It is noteworthy that there
were no areas of increased activation within the temporal lobes for
this comparison (NL > FO).
In contrast, rejection of foil stimuli (FO > NL) resulted in
widespread activation of frontal areas bilaterally, including the right
medial (BA 6, 9), right superior (BA 10), right and left inferior (BA
44, 47), and left precentral (BA 4) areas. As in the FF > NL
comparison, the right fusiform area (BA 20/37) was activated.
Encoding versus retrieval of unfamiliar faces
Encoding of unfamiliar faces resulted in greater activation of the
right and left posterior inferior parietal areas (BA 40) relative to
recognition of the identical faces (Table
4, Fig. 2). In contrast, NL unfamiliar
faces resulted in greater, primarily right-sided, activation within
frontal (BA 8, 9, and 6/44), temporal (BA 37), and parietal (BA 40)
areas relative to face encoding.
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DISCUSSION |
Three primary conclusions can be drawn from this event-related
fMRI study. First, recognition of famous faces produced significantly larger MR signal intensity changes over widespread areas of the prefrontal and lateral temporal regions. These changes were observed when famous faces were contrasted with recognition of recently encoded
faces or unfamiliar faces seen for the first time. Second, we observed
increased activity in hippocampal and parahippocampal regions for
famous faces. Third, a recent exposure to a previously unfamiliar face
did not produce increased activation of the anterior temporal and
hippocampal regions when compared to a novel unfamiliar face. Instead,
newly learned faces produced increased activity in frontal and/or
parietal regions. These findings are considered in relation to the role
and contribution of the temporofrontal region and hippocampus in
long-term memory retrieval.
Temporofrontal activation
Current models of face processing distinguish between recognition
and identification of a face. Face familiarity or recognition can be
achieved without also being able to identify a particular face. Person
identification requires activation of pre-existing semantic and
biographical information stored in long-term memories (Bruce and Young,
1986 ). Relevant to the current findings, famous faces but not
unfamiliar faces (NL or FO) can proceed beyond the stage of recognition
to semantic identification (i.e., identity specific code). Recognition
of famous faces produced bilateral activation of temporofrontal
regions, including the superior, medial, and inferior prefrontal areas,
and the anterior to posterior lateral surface of the middle temporal
gyrus. In contrast, NL or FO faces did not activate the temporofrontal
network. It would appear, therefore, that temporofrontal activations
are specific to long-term retrieval from the person-identity system
rather than face processing and face recognition in general (Nyberg et al., 1996 ).
Temporofrontal areas are commonly active during semantic retrieval
tasks involving words and pictures, although activations are typically
left-sided (Vandenberghe et al., 1996 ; Thompson-Schill et al., 1997 ;
Mummery et al., 1999 ). Judgment of familiarity for famous faces
produced bilateral activation of the temporofrontal system when
compared to a similar judgment of familiarity for a recently
encountered but "unknown" face. Clinical lesion and neuroimaging
studies suggest that the left and right temporal lobes play an
important role in retrieving information from the person-identity
system (Hanley et al., 1990 ; Evans et al., 1995 ; Harris and Kay, 1995 ;
Reinkemeier et al., 1997 ). Damage to the right anterior temporal area
results in selective impairment in semantic identification of famous
faces, whereas left anterior temporal damage is associated with
impaired identification of animals and tools (Tranel et al., 1997 ).
Similarly, naming people produces bilateral temporal lobe activity on
PET imaging, whereas naming tools or animals results in unilateral left
temporal lobe activity (Damasio et al., 1996 ).
Damasio and colleagues (1996) have suggested that the right inferior
temporal/polar regions are involved in retrieval of conceptual knowledge about famous faces because they represent "unique"
stimuli. Faces provide a means to identify a particular individual on
the basis of a unique set of biographical/semantic information (e.g., name, occupation, interests, and place of origin). Well-known faces
also have the potential to elicit retrieval of affective responses and
personal episodic incidents. Markowitsch and colleagues (Markowitsch,
1995 ; Kroll et al., 1997 ) proposed that anterolateral temporal and
inferolateral frontal cortices, connected via the uncinate fasciculus,
are critical structures supporting retrieval from episodic
autobiographical long-term memory. The prefrontal cortex is not the
storage site for memory representations, but contributes to memory
retrieval by triggering and structuring the search for stored
representations, presumably in distributed posterior neocortical sites.
Famous faces may intersect both episodic/autobiographical and semantic
memory systems and induce more extensive and bilateral temporofrontal
activations than other types of stimuli.
Hippocampal activation
Recognition of famous faces produced increased MR activity in the
hippocampal region compared to NL and FO faces. Two PET studies
(Sergent et al., 1992 ; Kapur et al., 1995 ) found hippocampal activity
associated with famous face recognition, but the observed side of
activation was inconsistent across the studies. Hippocampal activity
also has been reported for long-term retrieval of stimuli other than
famous faces. Bilateral hippocampal activation (stronger on the right)
was observed for retrieval of navigation information and recalling
previously learned routes (Ghaem et al., 1997 ; Maguire et al., 1997 ).
Maguire and Mummery (1999) examined PET activation associated with
recollection of four types of information: autobiographical events,
public events, autobiographical facts, and general knowledge. A common
retrieval network (predominantly left-sided) was identified that
included the anterolateral temporal cortex, parahippocampus, and
posterior cingulate. A similar right-sided network, including dorsal
prefrontal cortex, was observed when subjects listened to and
"imagined" events from autobiographical memory (Fink et al.,
1996 ).
The presence of hippocampal activation for retrieval of information
from long-term semantic memory would appear to be inconsistent with the
traditional notion that the hippocampus plays a time-limited role in
long-term memory retrieval processes (Squire and Alvarez, 1995 ).
However, Cohen et al. (1999) recently proposed that the hippocampus
mediates "memory binding or relational memory." From this
perspective, famous faces have the potential to be relationally bound
to information in pre-existing long-term memory (i.e., identification). Similarly, Nadel and Moscovitch (1997) proposed that the mesial temporal lobe acts to update and enrich the semantic network throughout the "life of a memory."
Alternative explanations
In the current study, activation differences observed for the
recognition of FF and NL faces could also be related to dimensions other than familiarity and identification. First, temporofrontal activations during FF retrieval may reflect aspects of face recognition that are unrelated to person-specific semantic memory. Models of face
processing propose that the recognition of familiar faces and the
matching of unfamiliar faces are subserved by distinct functional
pathways that arise from two types of structural encoding. Unfamiliar
face processing relies on view-dependent representations, whereas
familiar face recognition draws from view-independent representations
based on multiple views of the same face (Rolls, 1992 ; Young et al.,
1993 ). It is conceivable that selective temporofrontal activation
during FF recognition may reflect utilization of a unique pathway for
the recognition of view-independent representations, rather than
retrieval from person-specific semantic networks.
Second, famous face stimuli were presented for the first time during
the recognition phase, whereas NL face pictures were previously seen
during the encoding phase. Thus, FF and NL faces also differ on the
dimension of "novelty" (Martin, 1999 ). It is important to note,
however, that both the famous faces and the foils were seen for the
first time (i.e., novel) during the recognition phase. Thus, novelty
could be mediating the areas commonly activated by both famous and
unfamiliar face foils when compared to previously seen faces. These
activations were located primarily in the right hemisphere (e.g., right
medial frontal gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, bilateral inferior
frontal gyrus, and right fusiform), and are consistent with previously
reported findings (Tulving et al., 1994 ; Clark et al., 1998 ; Martin,
1999 ).
However, unlike the famous faces, the novel unfamiliar faces did not
show increased activity in the hippocampus or temporofrontal region
when contrasted with the NL faces. There is a striking absence of
activation in these regions for comparisons involving NL versus FO
retrieval and encoding versus retrieval of unfamiliar faces. Instead,
increased frontal and parietal lobe activations were observed when NL
and FO faces are compared. Frontal activations are commonly reported
during episodic retrieval conditions and for novel stimuli (as
discussed above). Encoding of unfamiliar faces showed increased
activation in a medial and posterior parietal area likely related to
the structural encoding task (i.e., rating of attractiveness). In
contrast, recognition of newly learned faces produced greater activity
than the encoding phase in the right supramarginal gyrus. Activation in
this region could represent a temporary storage function of the
parietal lobes in mediating recent episodic retrieval operations
(Jonides et al., 1998 ).
Our neuroimaging findings could not be accounted for by behavioral
variability because accuracy and reaction times were comparable in
recognizing FF versus NL faces. Behavioral differences were observed
with foil stimuli, which were rejected more slowly, but with a higher
rate of accuracy than the FF and NL faces. By using an event-related
fMRI design (D'Esposito et al., 1999 ), however, we were able to base
our functional images solely on correct trials, thereby eliminating the
problems in interpreting brain maps when behavioral differences are
observed in blocked trial design experiments.
Summary
Our overall findings suggest a common neural network for long-term
retrieval of famous faces. This network includes the temporofrontal region and the mesial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus and
parahippocampus. This pattern of activation is consistent with other
studies of long-term semantic and episodic memory (Fink et al., 1996 ;
Maguire and Mummery, 1999 ). The relative degree of activation of the
left and/or right side of this network may vary depending on different
task and stimulus dimensions, which as yet remain poorly understood.
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FOOTNOTES |
Received June 15, 1999; revised Oct. 18, 1999; accepted Oct. 18, 1999.
This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental
Health (P01-MH51358 and R01-MH57836), National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01-NS33576 and RO1-NS37738), and
National Institute of Drug Abuse (R01-DA09465). We thank P. Bellgowan,
R. Cabeza, R. Cox, J. Cunningham, S. Fuller, T. Hammeke, J. Hyde, K. Paller, M. Parsons, T. Prieto, A. Rosen, K. Rowe, E. Stein, B. Ward,
and S. Woodley for technical assistance and helpful comments.
Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Stephen M. Rao, Section of
Neuropsychology, Medical College of Wisconsin, 9200 West Wisconsin
Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53226. E-mail: srao{at}mcw.edu.
 |
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