Short-latency preference for faces in the primate superior colliculus

Face processing is fundamental to primates and has been extensively studied in higher-order visual cortex. Here we report that visual neurons in the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) display a preference for faces, that the preference emerges within 50ms of stimulus onset – well before “face patches” in visual cortex – and that this activity can distinguish faces from other visual objects with accuracies of ~80%. This short-latency preference in SC depends on signals routed through early visual cortex, because inactivating the lateral geniculate nucleus, the key relay from retina to cortex, virtually eliminates visual responses in SC, including face-related activity. These results reveal an unexpected circuit in the primate visual system for rapidly detecting faces in the periphery, complementing the higher-order areas needed for recognizing individual faces., , Matlab_R2022b, # Data from: Short-latency preference for faces in the primate superior colliculus

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhjw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhjw)

README for all datasets provided for manuscript:

* Short-latency preference for faces in the primate superior colliculus
* Gongchen Yu\* , Leor N. Katz\* , Christian Quaia, Adam Messinger, Richard J. Krauzlis
* These authors contributed equally

Correspondence: [e-mail], [e-mail]

Data are provided in .mat files.
The provided m file PlotFigures.m has been created to load the datafiles and plot.
The folder functionforplot contains all the functions that are needed for PlotFigure.m
Resultant plots match those in the paper.

Readme for each figure is within the PlotFigures.m function.
We also add them here:

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##### Figure 1C

Inside this mat:
'foraveragecategorypsth\_individualcategory' - 1*5 cell corresponds to 5object categories: 'face', 'body', 'hand', 'fruit&vegetable', 'humanm...