Abigail Gantz¹, Ben Deen¹; ¹Tulane University

Face processing has been argued to rely on two distinct neural pathways: a ventral pathway within ventral temporal cortex, and a lateral pathway within the superior temporal sulcus (STS) specialized for processing dynamic information for social perception. Within both pathways, visual information proceeds along a posterior-to-anterior path from early visual areas in occipital cortex to the anterior temporal lobe. However, the anterior-most part of this system has been difficult to study using neuroimaging, due to magnetic susceptibility artifacts reducing signal quality in the anterior temporal lobe. Recent work using advanced fMRI methods has identified a face-selective area in the temporal pole (TPFA). Here we ask how the TPFA is situated with respect the broader functional architecture of the face processing system, and whether it belongs to the ventral or lateral pathway. In N=10 participants, we tested whether the TPFA has signature functional properties of the lateral pathway face areas: a stronger response to dynamic over static faces, and an auditory response to voices. To test sensitivity to motion content, participants viewed dynamic videos of faces or scenes as well as static images taken from video frames. To test for a voice response, participants listed to audio clips of speech (sentences and nonword lists) in addition to a synthetic non-vocal control with matched acoustic features. Results (reigon-of-interest analysis) showed that TPFA showed a preference for dynamic over static faces, as well as a preference for speech over synthetic sounds. The response of TPFA across conditions was closer to face areas in the STS than to ventral stream areas such as the occipital and fusiform face areas. Given the functional profile demonstrated here, and the anatomical positioning of the TPFA at the anterior tip of the temporal lobe, we propose that TPFA constitutes the cortical endpoint of the lateral face processing pathway.