Beyond the Memory Mechanism: Person-selective and Nonselective Processes in Recognition of Personally Familiar Faces

摘要

Special processes recruited during the recognition of personallynfamiliar people have been assumed to reflect the rich episodicnand semantic information that selectively represents eachnperson. However, the processes may also include person nonselectivenones, which may require interpretation in terms beyondnthe memory mechanism. To examine this possibility, we assessedndecrease in differential activation during the second presentationnof an identical face (repetition suppression) as an indexnof person selectivity. During fMRI, pictures of personally familiar,nfamous, and unfamiliar faces were presented to healthy subjectsnwho performed a familiarity judgment. Each face was presentednonce in the first half of the experiment and again in the secondnhalf. The right inferior temporal and left inferior frontal gyri werenactivated during the recognition of both types of familiar facesninitially, and this activation was suppressed with repetition.nAmong preferentially activated regions for personally familiarnover famous faces, robust suppression in differential activationnwas exhibited in the bilateral medial and anterior temporal structures,nleft amygdala, and right posterior STS, all of which arenknown to process episodic and semantic information. On thenother hand, suppression was minimal in the posterior cingulate,nmedial prefrontal, right inferior frontal, and intraparietal regions,nsome of which were implicated in social cognition and cognitivencontrol. Thus, the recognition of personally familiar people isncharacterized not only by person-selective representation butnalso by nonselective processes requiring a research frameworknbeyond the memory mechanism, such as a social adaptivenresponse. ■