Distributed process for retrieval of person knowledge

Face perception plays a fundamental and multifaceted role in social communication. We have proposed that the face perception is mediated by a distributed neural system that includes numerous brain regions, including face-selective regions in extrastriate visual cortex (the ‘core system’) and areas for other functions such as emotion, action understanding, and person knowledge (Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000). In this chapter, I focus on the aspects of this distributed system that are involved in recognition of familiar faces and the concomitant activation of associated person knowledge and emotion. Finally, I present an amplified version of our model that explicitly incorporates the systems for familiar face recognition and for understanding facial gestures such as expression and eye gaze.