Effective connectivity from early visual cortex to posterior occipitotemporal face areas supports face selectivity and predicts developmental prosopagnosia

Abstract

Face processing is mediated by interactions between functional areas in the occipital and temporal lobe, and the fusiform face area (FFA) and anterior temporal lobe play key roles in the recognition of facial identity. Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP), a lifelong face recognition impairment, have been shown to have structural and functional neuronal alterations in these areas. The present study investigated how face selectivity is generated in participants with normal face processing, and how functional abnormalities associated with DP, arise as a function of network connectivity. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and dynamic causal modeling, we examined effective connectivity in normal participants by assessing network models that include early visual cortex (EVC) and face-selective areas and then investigated the integrity of this connectivity in participants with DP. Resultsshowedthat a feedforward architecture fromEVCto the occipital face area,EVC toFFA,andEVCto posteriorsuperiortemporalsulcus(pSTS)bestexplainedhowface selectivity arises inbothcontrolsandparticipantswithDP. In this architecture, theDPgroupshowedreducedconnection strengthsonfeedforward connections carrying face informationfromEVCtoFFA and EVC to pSTS. These altered network dynamics in DP contribute to the diminished face selectivity in the posterior occipitotemporal areas affected in DP. These findings suggest a novel viewonthe relevance of feedforward projectionfromEVCto posterior occipitotemporal face areas in generating cortical face selectivity and differences in face recognition ability.