NEI Funded Study Reveals Neural Mechanism of Encoding Familiar Faces

National Eye Institute funded research at University of Tsukuba demonstrated that faces of familiar individuals with whom one has frequent social interactions with are learned in the basal ganglia region through the same neural mechanisms that recognize the value of objects.

 The basal ganglia, specifically the striatum tail, located in the deep region of the brain, plays a critical role in associating objects with their value through long-term experience. However, insight into how this mechanism operates in complex social situations, such as daily life, which is different from laboratory environments, remains unclear.

Read about the University of Tsukuba research here.