Neuroimaging researchers like to talk about bits of the brain in terms of what kind of stimuli they respond to.
The "Fusiform Face Area (FFA)" and "Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA)" are two of the most popular of these 'clue is in the name' areas. The FFA lights up in response to seeing faces, while the PPA is more into places... so textbooks will tell you.
But how selective are these areas really? We know that the FFA activates more to faces than to other things on average, but is there overlap? Are there non-faces that activate the FFA more than many faces? Or perhaps, are there faces that
activate the FFA? If there were, it would undermine the whole concept of the FFA as a "face area".
NIH researchers Marieke Mur et al have just examined this question and
the results are out now in the Journal of Neuroscience
...
