RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Task Modulation of Single-Neuron Activity in the Human Amygdala and Hippocampus
JF eneuro
JO eNeuro
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP ENEURO.0398-21.2021
DO 10.1523/ENEURO.0398-21.2021
VO 9
IS 1
A1 Runnan Cao
A1 Alexander Todorov
A1 Nicholas J. Brandmeir
A1 Shuo Wang
YR 2022
UL http://www.eneuro.org/content/9/1/ENEURO.0398-21.2021.abstract
AB The human amygdala and hippocampus are critically involved in various processes in face perception. However, it remains unclear how task demands or evaluative contexts modulate processes underlying face perception. In this study, we employed two task instructions when participants viewed the same faces and recorded single-neuron activity from the human amygdala and hippocampus. We comprehensively analyzed task modulation for three key aspects of face processing and we found that neurons in the amygdala and hippocampus (1) encoded high-level social traits such as perceived facial trustworthiness and dominance and this response was modulated by task instructions; (2) encoded low-level facial features and demonstrated region-based feature coding, which was not modulated by task instructions; and (3) encoded fixations on salient face parts such as the eyes and mouth, which was not modulated by task instructions. Together, our results provide a comprehensive survey of task modulation of neural processes underlying face perception at the single-neuron level in the human amygdala and hippocampus.