Our results show that the face-processing network in the macaque brain is more extensive than reported previously and includes several additional areas

in MTL and the ventral temporal cortex, including potential FFA homologs. fMRI data from two awake and three anesthetized monkeys were acquired while the animals were shown visual stimuli belonging to different categories (faces, fruit, fractals, and houses for awake animals and faces and fruit for anesthetized animals). Data were acquired at 7T by using a vertical primate scanner (see Goense et al., 2008 for technical details). Figure 1 shows examples of the stimuli (Figure 1A) and the timing of the behavioral paradigm used for awake monkeys (Figures 1B and 1C). We used an SE-based functional imaging protocol that

INCB024360 ic50 was optimized to perform fMRI in the ventral temporal lobe and was previously shown not to suffer from signal loss near the ear canal (Goense et al., 2008). Figures 1D–1G show that by using this protocol we were able to reliably record functional activation in the ventral temporal lobe. Figures 1E–1G show visually induced functional activation in an awake animal in response to static images. Visual responses were found in the early visual cortex (V1–V4) and in a large portion of the temporal cortex, including the STS and inferior temporal gyrus (ITG). In addition, the ventral temporal cortex was also clearly activated learn more (Figure 1G), including ventral TE and the parahippocampal region almost (area TF). The pattern of visually elicited activation agrees well with the known visual areas based on electrophysiological and anatomical data (Gattass et al., 2005). We examined face-selective areas in the STS and ITG of awake monkeys (Figure 2) with the purpose of comparing the functional activation measured with the high-field SE-BOLD method to

data reported in the literature with the more common GE-BOLD method (Pinsk et al., 2005) and the contrast agent-based cerebral blood volume (CBV) method (Tsao et al., 2003 and Tsao et al., 2008a). The comparison of faces versus the other three object categories yielded significant bilateral face-selective BOLD activation in the anterior, middle, and posterior parts of the STS (Figure 2 and Figure S1, available online). All animals showed strong and extensive face-selective activation in the STS (Table 1) in agreement with previous studies in macaques (Logothetis et al., 1999, Pinsk et al., 2005, Rajimehr et al., 2009, Tsao et al., 2003 and Tsao et al., 2008a). Although in cases of strong activation the STS middle patch appeared to be contiguous, single-subject analysis showed that in several animals it actually consisted of two separate patches. Figures 2E and 2F show the time courses of the signals in the anterior and middle face patches in the STS of monkey B04.