Winrich Freiwald, Professor of Neurosciences and Behavior at The Rockefeller University, discusses the connection between sociality and intelligence, the importance of face processing for social cognition, and the neural machinery underlying face recognition in the primate brain. Dr. Freiwald summarizes the stages of visual processing from the retina to primary visual cortex, and the history of the discovery of face selective cells in inferotemporal (IT) cortex. The talk then focuses on the behavior of neurons in the face processing network within IT cortex.

Video:

• On the neural machinery of faces (1:03:18)

Additional Resources:

• Winrich Freiwald’s website
• Freiwald, W., Duchaine, B. & Yovel, G. (2016) Face processing systems: From neurons to real-world social perception, Annual Review of Neuroscience 39:325-346.