“Hearing faces and seeing voices”: Amodal coding of person identity in the human brain

Hasan, B. A. S., Valdes-Sosa, M., Gross, J. and Belin, P. (2016) “Hearing faces and seeing voices”: Amodal coding of person identity in the human brain. Scientific Reports, 6, 37494. (doi: 10.1038/srep37494) (PMID:27881866) (PMCID:PMC5121604)

Abstract

Recognizing familiar individuals is achieved by the brain by combining cues from several sensory modalities, including the face of a person and her voice. Here we used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and a whole-brain, searchlight multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to search for areas in which local fMRI patterns could result in identity classification as a function of sensory modality. We found several areas supporting face or voice stimulus classification based on fMRI responses, consistent with previous reports; the classification maps overlapped across modalities in a single area of right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). Remarkably, we also found several cortical areas, mostly located along the middle temporal gyrus, in which local fMRI patterns resulted in identity “cross-classification”: vocal identity could be classified based on fMRI responses to the faces, or the reverse, or both. These findings are suggestive of a series of cortical identity representations increasingly abstracted from the input modality.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Belin, Professor Pascal and Hasan, Dr Bashar Awwad Sh and Gross, Professor Joachim
• Authors: Hasan, B. A. S., Valdes-Sosa, M., Gross, J., and Belin, P.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
• Journal Name: Scientific Reports
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• ISSN: 2045-2322
• ISSN (Online): 2045-2322
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2016 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Nature 6:37494
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
59705	1	Natural and modulated neural communication: State-dependent decoding and driving of human Brain Oscillations.	Joachim Gross	Wellcome Trust (WELLCOME)	098433/Z/12/Z	INP - CENTRE FOR COGNITIVE NEUROIMAGING
42975	1	The perception of voice gender and identity - a combined behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging approach	Pascal Belin	Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)	BB/E003958/1	INP - CENTRE FOR COGNITIVE NEUROIMAGING