Editing Visual processing (section)

=== Fusiform Face Area (FFA) ===
The fusiform face area is located within the [[inferior temporal cortex]] in the [[fusiform gyrus]]. Similar to the PPA, the FFA exhibits higher neural activation when visually processing faces more so than places or buildings (Kanwisher et al., 1997). However, the fusiform area also shows activation for other stimuli and can be trained to specialize in the visual processing of objects of expertise. Past studies have investigated the activation of the FFA in people with specialized visual training, like bird watchers or car experts who have adapted a visual skill in identifying traits of birds and cars respectively. It has been shown that these experts have developed FFA activation for their specific visual expertise. Other experiments have studied the ability to develop expertise in the FFA using 'greebles', a visual stimulus generated to have a few components that can be combined to make a series of different configurations, much like how a variety of slightly different facial features can be used to construct a unique face. Participants were trained on their ability to distinguish greebles by differing features and had activation in the FFA measured periodically through their learning – the results after training demonstrated that greeble activation in the FFA increased over time whereas FFA responses to faces actually decreased with increased greeble training. These results suggested three major findings in regards to FFA in visual processing: firstly, the FFA does not exclusively process faces; secondly, the FFA demonstrates activation for 'expert' visual tasks and can be trained over time to adapt to new visual stimuli; lastly, the FFA does not maintain constant levels of activation for all stimuli and instead seems to 'share' activation in such a way that the most frequently viewed stimuli receives the greatest activation in the FFA as seen in the greebles study (Gauthier et al., 2000).