Fig. 1: Units in CIT and AIT show pareidolia selectivity.

a Example visual stimuli used in the experiment. Faces (red box) and non-face objects (gray box) were included to be able to calculate the face selectivity of the neural units. Each pareidolia image (orange box) included a matched control object (blue box), which had the same object identity, but did not evoke the perceptual experience of a face. Pareidolia and matched control image examples adapted from Wardle, S.G., Taubert, J., Teichmann, L. et al. Rapid and dynamic processing of face pareidolia in the human brain. Nat Commun 11, 4518 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18325-8 released under a CC BY license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. b The beeswarm plot shows normalized neural response per unit averaged across 150 ms time window starting at response onset (see Methods) to faces (red) and non-faces (gray) in central IT (CIT; n = 208, pooled across 4 monkeys). The black central horizontal line shows the mean response, the black central vertical line indicates confidence intervals. Open circles and squares represent the example face (circle) and nonface (square) units shown in (d, e. c). Plot showing normalized neural response per unit to pareidolia (orange) and matched control objects (blue). Same conventions as in (b). d The time course of an example face unit (depicted by an open circle in b, c) in CIT. X-axis represents time in milliseconds and y-axis shows the normalized neural response. Vertical dashed line at t = 0 indicates stimulus onset. Gray line at t = 100 indicates stimulus offset. e Time course of an example nonface unit (depicted by an open square in b, c). Same conventions as in (d). f, g Beeswarm plots showing normalized neural responses per unit anterior IT (AIT; n = 163, pooled across 5 monkeys). Same conventions as in (b, c). Time course of an example face unit (h) and nonface unit (i) in AIT. Same conventions as in (d, e). The small inset of the macaque brain shows the approximate location of the recording sites in CIT (pink circle) and AIT (green circle).