Attentional modulation differentially affects ventral and dorsal face areas in both normal participants and developmental prosopagnosics.

Abstract

Face-selective cortical areas that can be divided into a ventral stream and a dorsal stream. Previous findings indicate selective attention to particular aspects of faces have different effects on the two streams. To better understand the organization of the face network and whether deficits in attentional modulation contribute to developmental prosopagnosia (DP), we assessed the effect of selective attention to different face aspects across eight face-selective areas. Our results from normal participants found that ROIs in the ventral pathway (OFA, FFA) responded strongly when attention was directed to identity and expression, and ROIs in the dorsal pathway (pSTS-FA, IFG-FA) responded the most when attention was directed to facial expression. Response profiles generated by attention to different face aspects were comparable in DPs and normals. Our results demonstrate attentional modulation affects the ventral and dorsal steam face areas differently and indicate deficits in attentional modulation do not contribute to DP.