April 15, 2006

Brain Star Award (biweekly award to trainees)

Recipient:

Zangenehpour Shahin- Biosketch
Program: Postdoctoral Fellowship
McGill University

Article:

Zangenehpour S & Chaudhuri A. 2005. Patchy organization and asymmetric distribution of the neural processing in monkey inferotemporal cortex. Current Biology. 15: 993-1005

Significance of the Article:

The results presented in the aforementioned paper, have for the first time revealed cellular-level activity maps of high-level vision in the primate brain. Through the use of molecular mapping and complex stimulation sequences that consisted of conspecific faces and familiar objects, the functional organisation of the independent neural machineries that subserve face- and object-processing in the adult monkey brain were mapped. These results show that face- and object-selective neurones form clusters along the antero-posterior extent of IT cortex. These clusters appear to meander with respect to each other and show no evidence of forming independent circumscribed modules. Rather, the clusters appear to be nodes on distributed networks of face- and object-processing. In addition, the lateralised distribution of face processing across the two hemispheres was explored in the same paper. Face-selective neurones were found to be asymmetrically distributed in favour of the right hemisphere. This result corroborates the findings of past behavioural and electrophysiological studies with respect to face processing. A growing number of studies have shown that the non-human primate brain possesses hemispheric asymmetry with respect to structure and function, very similar to that found in the human brain. In the human brain, the asymmetric organisation is often attributed to the development of high-level complex cognitive abilities such as language. This was thought to set apart human brain organisation from both its close and distant evolutionary relatives. What the growing evidence on hemispheric asymmetry in the non-human primate brain suggests is a phylogenetic explanation for the laterality of structure and function observed in the human brain. And what this paper reveals is further converging evidence for this notion using cellular-resolution activity maps.