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The hippocampus shows an own‐age bias during unfamiliar face viewing
Author(s) -
Koen Joshua D.,
Hauck Nedra,
Rugg Michael D.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.15523
Subject(s) - psychology , fusiform face area , face perception , episodic memory , repetition (rhetorical device) , face (sociological concept) , neural correlates of consciousness , cognitive psychology , perception , hippocampus , recognition memory , contrast (vision) , encoding (memory) , hippocampal formation , developmental psychology , audiology , neuroscience , cognition , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , social science , artificial intelligence , sociology , computer science
The present study investigated the neural correlates of the own‐age bias for face recognition in a repetition suppression paradigm. Healthy young and older adults viewed upright and inverted unfamiliar faces. Some of the upright faces were repeated following one of two delays (lag 0 or lag 11). Repetition suppression effects were observed in bilateral fusiform cortex. However, there were no significant effects indicating an own‐age bias in repetition suppression. The absence of these effects is arguably inconsistent with perceptual expertise accounts of own‐age biases in face processing. By contrast, the right anterior hippocampus showed an own‐age bias (greater activity for own‐age compared to other‐age faces) when viewing an unfamiliar face for the first time. Given the importance of the hippocampus for episodic memory encoding, we conjecture that the increased hippocampal activity for own‐age relative to other‐age faces reflects differential engagement of neural processes supporting the episodic encoding of faces and might provide insight into the neural underpinnings of own‐age biases in face recognition memory.