FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC-RESONANCE-IMAGING OF HUMAN VISUAL-CORTEX DURING FACE MATCHING - A COMPARISON WITH POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY

Cortical areas associated with the perception of faces mere identified using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). T2-weighted grad ient echo, echo-planar MR images were obtained using a modified 1.5-T GE Signa MRI. In all nine subjects studied, performance of a face-matc hing task was associated with a region of significantly increased MR s ignal in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, extending from the infer ior occipital sulcus to the lateral occipitotemporal sulcus and fusifo rm gyrus. Smaller and more variable signal increases were found in dor solateral occipitoparietal cortex near the intraparietal sulcus. Signa l decreases were found in the angular gyrus and posterior cingulate co rtex. Single-subject fMRI analyses revealed discrete areas of activati on with well-defined borders. Group analyses of spatially smoothed fMR I data produced results that replicated most aspects of previous studi es of face processing using positron emission tomography (PET). These results show that PET and fMRI identify functional areas with similar anatomical locations. In addition, fMRI reveals interindividual variat ion in the anatomical location of higher-level processing areas with g reater anatomical precision. (C) 1996 Acdaemic Press, Inc.