Keys to expertise in the brain
By Bruce Bower
A small brain area often treated as solely responsible for face recognition actually fosters expertise at identifying items in any category a person strives to master, from birds to cars to made-up stuff, a new study finds.
Earlier investigations found that viewing faces activates a section of the visual cortex located near the back of the brain’s outer layer. The most pronounced neural responses appear on the right side of the structure, called the fusiform face area, or FFA.