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Science 28 September 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5539, pp. 2405 - 2407
DOI: 10.1126/science.1066018
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Perspectives

NEUROSCIENCE:
The Face of Controversy

Jonathan D. Cohen and Frank Tong

Neuroscientists have long puzzled over whether our brains process and represent information according to modules (precise brain areas respond to separate and specific stimuli) or in a distributed fashion (different brain areas cooperate to represent the same stimulus). In an enlightening Perspective, Cohen and Tong discuss two fascinating neuroimaging studies that identify areas of the human brain that represent the perception of human faces and other parts of the human body (Downing et al., Haxby et al.). As the Perspective authors explain, one group invokes modularity and the other group invokes distributed representation to explain their results, raising the debate about modularity versus distributed representation to new heights.

The authors are in the Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA. E-mail: jdc{at}princeton.edu.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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Patches with Links: A Unified System for Processing Faces in the Macaque Temporal Lobe.
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Genetic influences on the neural basis of social cognition.
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Phil Trans R Soc B 361, 2129-2141
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The origins and evolution of functional modules: lessons from protein complexes.
J. B Pereira-Leal, E. D Levy, and S. A Teichmann (2006)
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Neurological imaging as evidence in political science: a review, critique, and guiding assessment.
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Functional Anatomy of Biological Motion Perception in Posterior Temporal Cortex: An fMRI Study of Eye, Mouth and Hand Movements.
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Selectivity for the Human Body in the Fusiform Gyrus.
M. V. Peelen and P. E. Downing (2005)
J Neurophysiol 93, 603-608
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N170 or N1? Spatiotemporal Differences between Object and Face Processing Using ERPs.
R. J. Itier and M. J. Taylor (2004)
Cereb Cortex 14, 132-142
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