Human brain mappingFeb 27, 2016

How communication in the back thinking area relates to recognizing facial expressions

Updated Feb 9, 2026

Abstract

Stronger connectivity in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS) is associated with better facial expression recognition.

Facial expression recognition performance may depend on the functional integration of the face network (FN).
Individuals showing stronger within-network connectivity (WNC) in the rpSTS performed better on the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test.
Resting-state functional connectivity between the rpSTS and other brain areas, such as the right occipital face area and early visual cortex, is positively correlated with facial expression recognition ability.
The functional connections between the early visual cortex and rpSTS, as well as the occipital face area and rpSTS, independently contribute to facial expression recognition.
The study emphasizes the important role of the rpSTS in processing facial expressions.

Simplified

Face perception is essential for daily and social activities. Neuroimaging studies have revealed a distributed face network (FN) consisting of multiple regions that exhibit preferential responses to invariant or changeable facial information. However, our understanding about how these regions work collaboratively to facilitate facial information processing is limited. Here, we focused on changeable facial information processing, and investigated how the functional integration of the FN is related to the performance of facial expression recognition. To do so, we first defined the FN as voxels that responded more strongly to faces than objects, and then used a voxel-based global brain connectivity method based on resting-state fMRI to characterize the within-network connectivity (WNC) of each voxel in the FN. By relating the WNC and performance in the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test across participants, we found that individuals with stronger WNC in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS) were better at recognizing facial expressions. Further, the resting-state functional connectivity (FC) between the rpSTS and right occipital face area (rOFA), early visual cortex (EVC), and bilateral STS were positively correlated with the ability of facial expression recognition, and the FCs of EVC-pSTS and OFA-pSTS contributed independently to facial expression recognition. In short, our study highlights the behavioral significance of intrinsic functional integration of the FN in facial expression processing, and provides evidence for the hub-like role of the rpSTS for facial expression recognition. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1930-1940, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View Full Text ↗

Abstract

Full Text

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week: