Goal-directed visual attention is a fundamental cognitive process that enables animals to selectively focus on specific regions of the visual field while filtering out irrelevant information. However, given the domain specificity of social behaviors, it remains unclear whether attention to faces versus nonfaces recruits different neurocognitive processes. In this study, we simultaneously recorded activity from temporal and frontal nodes of the attention network while macaques performed a goal-directed visual search task. V4 and inferotemporal (IT) visual category-selective units, selected during cue presentation, discriminated fixations on targets and distractors during the search but were differentially engaged by face and house targets. V4 and IT category-selective units also encoded fixation transitions and search dynamics. Compared with distractors, fixations on targets reduced spike–LFP coherence within the temporal cortex. Importantly, target-induced desynchronization between the temporal and prefrontal cortices was only evident for face targets, suggesting that attention to faces differentially engaged the prefrontal cortex. We further revealed bidirectional theta influence between the temporal and prefrontal cortices using Granger causality, which was again disproportionate for faces. Finally, we showed that the search became more efficient with increasing target-induced desynchronization. Together, our results suggest domain specificity for attending to faces and an intricate interplay between visual attention and social processing neural networks.

目标导向的视觉注意是一个基本的认知过程，它使动物能够选择性地专注于视野的特定区域，同时过滤掉不相关的信息。然而，鉴于社会行为的领域特异性，目前尚不清楚对面孔和非面孔的关注是否会招募不同的神经认知过程。在这项研究中，我们同时记录了来自注意力网络颞节点和额节点的活动，同时猕猴执行目标导向的视觉搜索任务。在线索呈现过程中选择的 V4 和颞下 （IT） 视觉类别选择单位在搜索过程中区分了对目标和干扰物的注视，但与面部和房屋目标的互动不同。V4 和 IT 类别选择单元也编码注视转换和搜索动态。与干扰物相比，对目标的注视降低了颞叶皮层内的尖峰-LFP 相干性。重要的是，目标诱导的颞叶皮层和前额叶皮层之间的不同步仅对面部目标很明显，这表明对面部的注意力不同地参与前额叶皮层。我们进一步使用 Granger 因果关系揭示了颞叶皮层和前额叶皮层之间的双向 θ 影响，这对于面部来说又是不成比例的。最后，我们表明，随着目标诱导的不同步的增加，搜索变得更加有效。总之，我们的结果表明关注面孔的领域特异性以及视觉注意力和社会处理神经网络之间错综复杂的相互作用。