Early widespread cortical distribution of coherent fusiform face selectiveactivity

Intracranial EEG was analyzed from 16 pharmaco-resistant epilepsy patients. Subjects participated in memory tasks for faces and/or words. Face-selecti ve coherence increases were found between the fusiform gyrus and temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices at 160-230 ms poststimulus onset. Word stimu li elicited weak or negligible response at the same latency. Phase lag incr eased monotonically with distance from the fusiform region. The slope was c onsistent with conduction velocities of myelinated cortico-cortical pathway s. These results suggest that the contribution of the fusiform gyrus to fac e processing at around 200 ms poststimulus onset is rapidly projected to wi despread cortical regions. Hum. Brain Mapping 11:286-293, 2000. (C) 2000 Wi ley-Liss, Inc.