Temporal Cortex Activation in Humans Viewing Eye and Mouth Movements

By Aina Puce, T. Allison, S. Bentin, John C. Gore, Gregory McCarthy. 1998

We sought to determine whether regions of extrastriate visual cortex could be activated in subjects viewing eye and mouth movements that occurred within a stationary face. Eleven subjects participated in three to five functional magnetic resonance imaging sessions in which they viewed moving eyes, moving mouths, or movements of check patterns that occurred in the same spatial location as the eyes or mouth. In each task, the stimuli were superimposed on a radial background pattern that continually moved inward to control for the effect of movement per se. Activation evoked by the radial background was assessed in a separate control task. Moving eyes and mouths activated a bilateral region centered in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). The moving check patterns did not appreciably activate the STS or surrounding regions. The activation by moving eyes and mouths was distinct from that elicited by the moving radial background, which primarily activated the posterior-temporal-occipital fossa and the lateral occipital sulcus—a region corresponding to area MT/V5. Area MT/V5 was also strongly activated by moving eyes and to a lesser extent by other moving stimuli. These results suggest that a superior temporal region centered in the STS is preferentially involved in the perception of gaze direction and mouth movements. This region of the STS may be functionally related to nearby superior temporal regions thought to be involved in lip-reading and in the perception of hand and body movement.

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Citations in the corpus

Theory of Mind: A Neural Prediction Problem (2013, neutral): “…are implicated in many aspects of social action perception, showing robust responses to face and body action in both humans (Jellema et al., 2000; Puce et al., 1998; Bonda et al., 1996; Allison et al., 2002) and monkeys (Perrett et al., 1985; Jellema and Perrett, 2003b; Jellema and Perrett,…”
Human neural systems for face recognition and social communication. (2002, background): “…consistently that a region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus is activated during the perception of biological movement, including movements of the face, such as eye and mouth movements, and movements of the whole body and hand (Bonda et al 1996; Decety and Grezes 1999; Puce et al 1998).”
An fMRI study of intentional and unintentional (embarrassing) violations of social norms. (2002, background): “This area has also been found to be highly sensitive to rotational movement, as well as visual and biological motion (Perrett et al., 1985; Bonda et al., 1996; Oram and Perrett, 1996; Puce et al., 1998; Grezes et al., 1999).”
Gaze Cueing of Attention (2007, background): “As with macaques, the human brain region that is responsive to perceived gaze direction is the STS area, with both dynamic (Hooker et al., 2003; Puce et al., 1998) and static face displays (Hoffman & Haxby, 2000).1 This activation does not appear to depend on the presence of a face per se because…”
Perception of human motion. (2007, background): “STSp is also robustly activated when one views whole-body motions rather than PL sequences (Pelphrey et al. 2003), as well as when one views motion confined to specific limbs or to the eyes, hand, and mouth (Calvert et al. 1997, Grèzes et al. 1998, Puce et al. 1998).”
The posterior superior temporal sulcus is sensitive to the outcome of human and non-human goal-directed actions. (2011, background): “, 2004a, 2005b) and face (Puce et al., 1998; Pelphrey et al., 2005b).”
Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging of crossmodal binding in the human heteromodal cortex. (2000, background): “Using fMRI, Puce and colleagues [44] reported bilateral activation (greater in the right hemisphere) of the STS when subjects passively viewed mouth movements.”
Electrophysiology and brain imaging of biological motion. (2003, background): “One prominently active region to viewing eye movements (gaze aversion and also eyes looking at the observer) is the cortex around the STS, particularly in the right hemisphere, and this same region is active also to viewing opening and closing movements of the mouth (Puce et al. 1998).”
Dissociable Neural Pathways Are Involved in the Recognition of Emotion in Static and Dynamic Facial Expressions (2003, unknown): “…prominent activations in brain regions specialized for the visual processing of coherent stimulus motion (V5; Zeki et al., 1991; Watson et al., 1993; Tootell and Taylor, 1995; Rees et al., 2000) and facial and body actions related to social signaling (STS; Puce et al., 1998; Allison et al., 2000).”
Exploring Ad-Elicited Emotional Arousal and Memory for the Ad Using fMRI (2013, background): “…McCarthy 2000; Vander Wyk et al. 2009), coactivation of the STS with the amygdala was shown to be associated with the integration of emotional information (Park et al. 2010), such as facial features that convey socially relevant information (e.g., eyes, mouth) (Puce et al. 1998; see Adolphs 1999).”
Autism, Asperger syndrome and brain mechanisms for the attribution of mental states to animated shapes. (2002, background): “This region has also been activated in a number of studies when subjects observed biological motion (Bonda et al., 1996; Puce et al., 1998; Allison et al., 2000).”
The enactive mind, or from actions to cognition: lessons from autism. (2003, background): “2001), a region also associated with basic ‘survival’ reactions such as evaluating facial expressions and/or direction of eye gaze (Puce et al. 1998).”