Extending a previous study that predicted human facial identity from the firing rates of a population of around 100 neurons in a region of the brain of awake monkeys, a study finds that neurons in the brain's anterior medial patch, implicated in face recognition, use a rule, called a "combinatorial code," to adjust firing rates of individual neurons such that the average firing rate for the population of neurons remains the same for each of 2,000 faces; further, the fruit fly olfactory system uses the same combinatorial code to identify odors, according to the author.
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Article #17-16341: "Conserved features of the primate face code," by Charles Stevens
MEDIA CONTACT: Charles Stevens, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA; tel: 858-531-4118; e-mail: < stevens@salk.edu >
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences