The hole precedence in face but not figure discrimination and its neuronal correlates

The discriminative tasks of face and geometrical figure were trained in three rhesus monkeys. The hole feature speeds up learning of face discrimination, but hampers learning of figure discrimination. By reducing presentation duration of the stimuli, the detecting precedence appears to be the hole feature of the face component, while it appears to be shape feature of figures. The patterns of neuron firings in inferior temporal cortex (IT) are consistent with the context-dependent precedence of hole feature. The results might suggest that the neural correlates exist not only in IT neurons, but also in combination with executive mechanism.