PUBLISHED: 26 JUNE 2017 | VOLUME: 1 | ARTICLE NUMBER: 0143

research highlights
NEUROSCIENCE
Decoding facial recognition
Cell 169, 1013–1028.e14 (2017)
TED THAI/CONTRIBUTOR/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY

We recognize complex objects with ease

and are especially quick to identify faces,
even under changing viewing conditions. A
central challenge in neuroscience has been to
understand how the brain represents complex
objects — a process thought to happen in the
inferotemporal cortex, which has been shown
to carry object-identity information, though
the governing principles remain unknown.
Using a combination of brain imaging and
single-neuron recordings of face-selective
regions in the macaque brain during the
presentation of systematically varied face
images, Doris Tsao and colleagues at Caltech
constructed an explicit model of face-
selective cells that can both decode a face
from neural responses and predict the firing
of these cells in response to the presentation
of an arbitrary face. In contrast with the
hypothesis that there are detectors for specific
individuals (for example, Jennifer Aniston
cells) or exemplars, this work shows that
neurons encode shape and appearance
features (for example, lip contours) —
abstract ingredients in a ‘face space’ that can
be combined to generate any possible face.
With only 205 cells, the authors were able to
recreate the face that a monkey was viewing,
highlighting the efficiency of this neural code.
Although face recognition is important,
the underlying question is about object
recognition as a whole — a far less
homogenous space than that of faces. It
remains to be seen whether feature-based
codes can be extended to object recognition.

Sara Constantino

1 NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR 1, 0143 (2017) | DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0143 | www.nature.com/nathumbehav

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