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- Page navigation anchor for RE: The Quest for the FFA led to the Expertise Account of its SpecializationRE: The Quest for the FFA led to the Expertise Account of its Specialization
The expertise accounts suggests that the fusiform face area (FFA) is an area recruited by expertise individuating objects that are perceptually similar because they share a configuration of parts. In this article, Kanwisher discussed the expertise account of the FFA briefly and only to dismiss it. We should expect to find in The Journal an accurate account of how influential research programs came to be and what their impact has been. Because my own story intersects with Kanwisher’s, I am in a unique position to clarify to the record and, because a great deal of my own research has been devoted to the study of expertise, I am also well positioned to offer a defense of the expertise account against Kanwisher’s dismissive conclusions.
In response to Kanwisher’s piece, I have written an article (available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.07038) in which I reflect on the extensive research program dedicated to the study of perceptual expertise and how it explains the many ways that faces are special, a research program that both predates and follows Kanwisher’s 1997 landmark article where FFA was was named. There is strong and replicable evidence that responses in the FFA are highly sensitive to experience with non-face objects. When Kanwisher suggests that expertise effects in FFA do not replicate, it is historically significant that she herself designed both the first fMRI study of expertise with cars and birds, in an advers...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.