# Familiarity Processing through Faces and Names: Insights from Multivoxel Pattern Analysis
## 4 Discussion
However, we found patterns of information related to specific face familiarity in the left temporal pole. This result confirms the existence of a specific area in the anterior temporal cortex that selectively processes familiar faces. We were not able to identify any significant pattern for name familiarity using the FDR-corrected threshold. This could be due to the low saliency of names compared to faces. Faces have more relevance for familiarity recognition than names, because of the univocal relation between the identity of the familiar person and its face, and the fact that different persons are named the same. The lower power of the signal for names compared to faces was demonstrated in the univariate contrasts of all faces versus all names and all names versus all faces. The lower magnitude of response for names makes MVPA analysis less accurate and noisier for this experimental condition. The differences in neural processing between familiar faces and names can be attributed to the distinct cognitive and perceptual mechanisms involved in recognizing these two types of stimuli. Faces are highly salient visual cues, and the human brain is evolutionarily wired to prioritize and excel in facial recognition [36]. The inherent variability in the intensity and nature of responses to visual and linguistic stimuli, such as names, may contribute to differences observed in neural processing [37]. Additionally, the social and emotional significance attached to faces, as primary markers of identity, might evoke stronger and more nuanced neural responses compared to the relatively abstract nature of names [12]. The intricate interplay of sensory, cognitive, and emotional factors underscores the unique neural signatures associated with processing familiar faces and names. In our study, MVPA was demonstrated to be a useful method for discriminating subtle differences between stimuli, such as the quality of \"being familiar\" or not. Our results are in line with the growing evidence that using MVPA sustains the existence of some neural areas that seem to process familiarity for stimuli of great salience such as faces. This distinction is possible because MVPA methods analyze patterns of activity across multiple voxels, rather than just focusing on individual voxels, and allow for a higher specificity than activation-based methods in identifying brain regions involved in a particular cognitive process or behavior, with less susceptibility to noise and artifacts in the fMRI signal. This improves the reliability and reproducibility of the results. Our findings implicate the existence of an integrated set of shared (abstract) and modality-specific areas (specifically for faces) that appear to work in concert with the recognition of familiar people. Because there is evidence suggesting that the processing of visually familiar, famous, and personally familiar faces does not lead to the same neural representation [27; 38; 39; 40], we suggest to continue investigating the influence of different degrees of familiarity in the face familiarity processing network. It could also be significant to perform the cross-classification analysis using other types of contrast stimuli such as voices or bodies. Our findings may also have practical implications for understanding neuropsychological disorders of face recognition and memory such as prosopagnosia and person recognition disorder. In prosopagnosia, people are unable to recognize familiar faces, although they can recognize familiar people from their voices and names. This suggests that, in people with prosopagnosia, access to semantic memory and knowledge is preserved but this access does not follow the modality-specific route for faces. It must follow either the shared (abstract) areas for faces and names or the modality-specific areas for names. In contrast, in person recognition disorder, patients are unable to recognize familiar people not only by their faces, but also by their voices and names [41].