Distinct representations of eye gaze and identity in the distributed humanneural system for face perception

Face perception requires representation of invariant aspects that underlie identity recognition as well as representation of changeable aspects, such as eye gaze and expression, that facilitate social communication. Using fun ctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the perception o f face identity and eye gaze in the human brain. Perception of face identit y was mediated more by regions in the inferior occipital and fusiform gyri, and perception of eye gaze was mediated more by regions in the superior te mporal sulci. Eye-gaze perception also seemed to recruit the spatial cognit ion system in the intraparietal sulcus to encode the direction of another's gate and to focus attention in that direction.