TY - JOUR
T1 - Investigating the influence of biological sex on the behavioral and neural basis of face recognition
AU - Scherf, K. Suzanne
AU - Elbich, Daniel B.
AU - Motta-Mena, Natalie V.
N1 - Funding Information:
3 This work was supported by the The Pennsylvania State University Social Science Research Institute, Department of Psychology, and Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship DGE1255832 (to N.V.M.-M.). Correspondence should be addressed to K. Suzanne Scherf, Department of Psychology, 113 Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802, E-mail: suzyscherf@psu.edu. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0104-17.2017 Copyright ©2017 Scherf et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the The Pennsylvania State University Social Science Research Institute, Department of Psychology, and Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship DGE1255832 (to N.V.M.-M.).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Scherf et al.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - There is interest in understanding the influence of biological factors, like sex, on the organization of brain function. We investigated the influence of biological sex on the behavioral and neural basis of face recognition in healthy, young adults. In behavior, there were no sex differences on the male Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT)+ or the female CFMT+ (that we created) and no own-gender bias (OGB) in either group. We evaluated the functional topography of ventral stream organization by measuring the magnitude and functional neural size of 16 individually defined face-, two object-, and two place-related regions bilaterally. There were no sex differences in any of these measures of neural function in any of the regions of interest (ROIs) or in group level comparisons. These findings reveal that men and women have similar category-selective topographic organization in the ventral visual pathway. Next, in a separate task, we measured activation within the 16 face-processing ROIs specifically during recognition of target male and female faces. There were no sex differences in the magnitude of the neural responses in any face-processing region. Furthermore, there was no OGB in the neural responses of either the male or female participants. Our findings suggest that face recognition behavior, including the OGB, is not inherently sexually dimorphic. Face recognition is an essential skill for navigating human social interactions, which is reflected equally in the behavior and neural architecture of men and women.
AB - There is interest in understanding the influence of biological factors, like sex, on the organization of brain function. We investigated the influence of biological sex on the behavioral and neural basis of face recognition in healthy, young adults. In behavior, there were no sex differences on the male Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT)+ or the female CFMT+ (that we created) and no own-gender bias (OGB) in either group. We evaluated the functional topography of ventral stream organization by measuring the magnitude and functional neural size of 16 individually defined face-, two object-, and two place-related regions bilaterally. There were no sex differences in any of these measures of neural function in any of the regions of interest (ROIs) or in group level comparisons. These findings reveal that men and women have similar category-selective topographic organization in the ventral visual pathway. Next, in a separate task, we measured activation within the 16 face-processing ROIs specifically during recognition of target male and female faces. There were no sex differences in the magnitude of the neural responses in any face-processing region. Furthermore, there was no OGB in the neural responses of either the male or female participants. Our findings suggest that face recognition behavior, including the OGB, is not inherently sexually dimorphic. Face recognition is an essential skill for navigating human social interactions, which is reflected equally in the behavior and neural architecture of men and women.
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U2 - 10.1523/ENEURO.0104-17.2017
DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0104-17.2017
M3 - Article
C2 - 28497111
AN - SCOPUS:85032146082
VL - 4
JO - eNeuro
JF - eNeuro
SN - 2373-2822
IS - 3
M1 - e0104-17.2017
ER -