Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - Department of Psychological ...

Prof. Greg Francis 1/2/13Face area?However, these results do not necessarily mean the FFA is responsible fordetecting facesHumans are very practiced at detecting faces, maybe the FFA is involved inpractice and expertise Gauthier et al. (2000) Participants see a sequence of objects (cars, faces, birds, other), judge similarity acrosstrials Participants include car and bird experts (everyone is a face expert)Face area?Bird and car experts show extra activity in right hemisphere FFA whenjudging faces or judging items in their area of expertise Note: the left side of the scan image is the right hemisphereSo faces may be special only because we practice a lotPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityGrandmother cells?We earlier dismissed the idea that responses from a single cell mightcorrespond to seeing your grandmotherHowever, this does not mean that some cells may not be quite specific intheir responsesSome epileptic patients have electrodes implanted in their brains to helpcontrol their seizures These electrodes can also be used to record responses to different stimuli Quiroga et al. (2005) made such recordings in the left posterior hippocampusfrom eight patientsJennifer Aniston NeuronSome cells respond to very specific sets of stimuliPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPitt-Aniston NeuronSome cells respond to very specific sets of stimuliHalle Berry NeuronSome cells respond to very specific sets of stimuliPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 4