We investigated whether these two categorization tasks evoked distinguishable patterns of activity in the cortical face network.Ī, Psychophysical procedure for obtaining the ambiguity threshold. Therefore each of them varied in both gender (male vs. Each stimulus was created by morphing together one Asian male face with one Caucasian female face, or one Asian female face with one Caucasian male face. Here we devised a face categorization task during which subjects categorized either the gender or the race of ambiguous face morphs. The mechanisms of attentional modulation of cortical activity based on high-level perceptual categorization rules are unknown. However, many common perceptual tasks entail categorization based on complex combinations of visual attributes. retinotopic organization of visual cortex category selectivity of ventral temporal cortex).

These studies have documented attentional modulation of visual properties that are processed or represented in regions that are functionally well-characterized (e.g. Similar effects of attention upon cortical activity have been observed during attention to visual features (e.g., Saenz et al., 2002 Liu et al., 2003) and objects (e.g., O'Craven et al., 1999 Serences et al., 2004). For example, covert visuospatial attention modulates activity in the corresponding retinotopic regions of extrastriate cortex (e.g., Yantis et al., 2002 Kelley et al., 2008). Evidence for attentional modulation of cortical activity has been reported in humans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in multiple perceptual domains. Furthermore, exploratory whole brain MVPC (using a searchlight procedure) revealed a network of dorsal frontoparietal regions (left middle frontal gyrus, left inferior and superior parietal lobule) that also exhibit distinct patterns for the two task-sets, suggesting that these regions may represent abstract goals during high-level categorization tasks.Īttention facilitates processing of task-relevant information ( Corbetta & Shulman, 2002 Desimone and Duncan, 1995 Yantis, 2008). houses) responses, but also task-specific (i.e., race vs. This result suggests that patterns of activity in these regions reflect not only stimulus-specific (i.e., faces vs. We used multivoxel pattern classification (MVPC) to show that task-specific modulations evoke reliably distinct spatial patterns of activity within three face-selective cortical regions (right fusiform face area and bilateral occipital face areas).

Each face was perceptually ambiguous in both dimensions, such that categorization of one dimension demanded selective attention to task-relevant information within the face. In the current study, observers categorized faces by gender (male vs. However, little is known about how high-level categorization task-set modulates perceptual representations.

Attentional modulation of cortical activity has been observed when attention is directed to specific locations, features, or objects. Scott Griessel/iStock/Getty Images Congratulations on your lifetime appointment as supreme dictator of Wrongsylvania.Attention is a neurocognitive mechanism that selects task-relevant sensory or mnemonic information to achieve current behavioral goals. Yes, obviously a literal child was intentionally flaunting her shameful body despite the clear distress it caused, you horror-show of a person. It was an embarrassingly long time before I realized that her statement was so many kinds of wrong that it's actually sold at the Wrong Store in Wrongingham, Wrongland, in different shades of wrong. I think I just stammered out an objection that the shirt I was wearing - a perfectly normal T-shirt - wasn't that tight. In response, this 60-year-old woman said, quite matter-of-factly, 'Maybe you wouldn't have such a problem if you didn't wear such tight shirts.' I didn't know what to say at the time. During a meeting with my sixth-grade teacher to discuss why my grades had fallen from 'Now you're just showing off' to 'We've had to start using an entirely different alphabet,' I hesitantly opened up about the teasing that played no small part in the problem. I didn't expect the adults to join in, though.

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