Cognitive Neuroscience: One Concept a Day

The Fusiform Face Area: Why Your Brain Has a Dedicated Face-Perception Module

In 1997, Nancy Kanwisher's lab identified a small region of the fusiform gyrus — the FFA — that responds more strongly to faces than virtually anything else. This article unpacks what the FFA is, where it sits, what it actually computes, and why a 2020 finding (blind people have an FFA too) is still rattling assumptions about how the brain organizes itself.