Neuroscience Letters 499 (2011) 64–69

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Neuroscience Letters
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neulet

The neural organization of perception in chess experts

Daniel C. Krawczyk a,b,∗ , Amy L. Boggan a , M. Michelle McClelland a , James C. Bartlett a
a
Center for BrainHealth® and School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083-0688, USA
b
Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390-9070, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The human visual system responds to expertise, and it has been suggested that regions that process faces
Received 3 February 2011 also process other objects of expertise including chess boards by experts. We tested whether chess and
Received in revised form 2 May 2011 face processing overlap in brain activity using fMRI. Chess experts and novices exhibited face selective
Accepted 15 May 2011
areas, but these regions showed no selectivity to chess configurations relative to other stimuli. We next
compared neural responses to chess and to scrambled chess displays to isolate areas relevant to exper-
Keywords:
tise. Areas within the posterior cingulate, orbitofrontal cortex, and right temporal cortex were active in
Perception
this comparison in experts over novices. We also compared chess and face responses within the poste-
Face processing
Chess
rior cingulate and found this area responsive to chess only in experts. These findings indicate that the
Expertise configurations in chess are not strongly processed by face-selective regions that are selective for faces in
fMRI individuals who have expertise in both domains. Further, the area most consistently involved in chess did
not show overlap with faces. Overall, these results suggest that expert visual processing may be similar
at the level of recognition, but need not show the same neural correlates.
© 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Expertise can be developed through extreme levels of practice
resulting in behavior considered to be outstanding relative to the
general population. Uncommonly effective performance within a
domain remains the clearest marker of expertise [10,7]. Recent
neuroimaging explorations of expertise using have begun to pro-
vide insights into the neural basis of expertise [8,26]. Among expert
domains, chess is widely regarded to be one in which a select few
experts perform at an exceptional level [6,15]. In the process of
becoming outstanding at chess, a Master level player accumulates
massive visual experience with chess configurations. This expe-
rience confers distinct advantages to experts over novices when
encountering situations that commonly appear in games. These
expertise effects are limited to game configurations, as the percep-
tual and memory advantages of experts are greatly reduced when
tasks are not chess game specific [10,6]. Meanwhile, the brain orga-
nization of perceptual recognition in chess experts has remained
unclear.
The perception of faces is a skill at which nearly everyone is
considered to be an expert. Face perception has been associated
Abbreviations: FFA, fusiform face area; OFA, occipital face area; MRI, magnetic
resonance imaging; MNI, montreal neurological institute; ROI, region of interest;
HRF, hemodynamic response function; GLM, general linear model.
∗ Corresponding author at: Center for BrainHealth® and School of Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083-0688, USA.
Tel.: +1 972 883 3234; fax: +1 214 905 3026.
E-mail address: daniel.krawczyk@utdallas.edu (D.C. Krawczyk).
activation of the fusiform gyrus [18]. More broadly, the fusiform is
considered to be a neural marker of visual expertise, as other stud-
ies have reported selective fusiform activity when car experts and
bird experts perceive cars and birds and when radiologists exam-
ine scans [12,27,17]. Such findings have spawned the hypothesis
that the fusiform gyrus can support expert processing in a variety
of domains. However, cars, birds, and body scans share proper-
ties with faces, including similar features, similar configurations,
and biological characteristics in the case of birds and radiology
scans. Chess allows a critical test for theories of visual expertise, as
chess configurations bear little featural or configural resemblance
to faces, cars, or birds and also lack biological characteristics. If
chess experts process chess patterns similarly to faces, it would
challenge the view that common visual or biological characteris-
tics are necessary for different classes of stimuli to be perceived in
the same way [9].
The idea that face-selective fusiform cortex can become adapted
to process chess patterns is a compelling one, and there have been
reports in the expertise literature that the fusiform may be involved
in processing chess patterns [21,24,2]. A recent documentary film
showed a neuroimaging clip with a chess expert and suggested
that the face-selective fusiform can be “hijacked” to process chess
patterns [23]. However, there has not yet been a published study
comparing expert chess perception to that of faces and other visual
categories.
The present study addressed the central question of how large
amounts of practice at chess alters the functional organization
of the brain. Specifically, we tested whether face selective areas

0304-3940/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2011.05.033
 D.C. Krawczyk et al. / Neuroscience Letters 499 (2011) 64–69
Fig. 1. (A) Examples of each category shown in the experimental task. Conditions included blocks of chess, random chess, faces, outdoor scenes, and objects. (B) Regions of
significant difference within the experts over the novices on the chess > random chess contrast. (C) Regions significantly greater for novices over experts on the chess minus
random chess contrast.
become adapted to support chess expertise at an early perceptual
level and whether there are other regions that become more active
when chess expertise has been achieved. We compared the activa-
tion of chess experts and novices when viewing faces, chess boards,
and other stimuli to determine whether chess and face perception
activate common regions using fMRI.
We included a comparison of chess board recognition to scram-
bled chess board recognition, as scrambled boards tend to reduce
the performance advantage typical of chess experts [10,6]. By
including this comparison, we are able to address a secondary
question: whether chess expertise is limited to game-specific con-
figurations at the neural level, or whether this expertise extends to
non-game configurations using the same spatial and featural infor-
mation. Furthermore, we were interested in whether such areas
would show chess selectivity relative to faces and other visual cat-
egories including scenes and objects.
Subjects were twelve healthy, right-handed males. Six were
chess experts recruited from the UT Dallas Chess Program, age
20–28 (M = 23 years). These subjects ranked within the top one
percent of tournament players (five International Masters, one
Grandmaster). Their expertise was substantiated by their com-
petitive ratings (Elo range = 2447–2583; M = 2515), years playing
(M = 16 years), and tournament activity (M = 17 per year). The
remaining six subjects were healthy males who were chess novices
age 21–27 (M = 25 years). These subjects reported that they rarely
played chess and had not participated in tournaments. This exper-
iment was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of UT
Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center. Informed consent was
obtained in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.
Subjects viewed blocks of items and judged whether each was a
repeat or a new image. Stimuli consisted of images of chess boards
from games, randomly positioned chess boards that could not occur
in real games, objects [14], and outdoor scenes (see Fig. 1A). Images
were presented in five runs of 8 blocks, 12 images per block, 2 s per
image, and a 5000 ms inter-stimulus interval. We used longer expo-
sure times and inter-stimulus intervals than standardly appear in
the face literature to ensure that novices could perform the task
given the complexity of chess boards. Images were presented off-
set from center to the right or left in an alternating sequence to
avoid apparent motion effects in the chess conditions between
65
non-matching items in sequence. Two image repeats occurred per
block, and subjects were instructed to press buttons for each repeat.
Each block, presented in a pseudo-randomized order, contained
one image category or was a fixation block (lasting 30 s).
Images were acquired using a 3T Philips MRI scanner with
a gradient echoplanar sequence (TR = 2000 ms, TE = 28 ms, flip
angle = 20◦ ) sensitive to BOLD contrast. Each volume consisted of
tilted axial slices (3 mm thick, 0.5 mm slice gap) that provided
nearly whole brain coverage. Anatomical T1-weighted images were
acquired in the following space: TR = 2100 ms, TE = 10, slice thick-
ness = 4 mm with no gap at a 90◦ flip angle.
FMRI block design analyses were conducted using mul-
tiple regression. Preprocessing was conducted using SPM5
(www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm). EPI images were realigned to the first
volume and then smoothed (8 mm 3D Gaussian kernel).
Separate regressors were used to model each block, convolved
with a canonical hemodynamic response function (HRF), and
entered into a modified general linear model (GLM). Parameter esti-
mates were extracted from this analysis for each regressor. At an
individual subject level, contrasts between conditions were com-
puted by performing one-sample t-tests on the contrasted images.
A faces minus scenes and objects contrast was used to function-
ally define ventral temporal and occipital regions of interest (ROIs)
using a Family-Wise Error (FWE) corrected threshold (p < .01). In
some instances False Discovery Rate (FDR) (p < .05) or uncorrected
(p < .005) thresholds were used to localize as many of the face
regions as possible in each subject (minimum of 10 voxels per clus-
ter). While we did not run an independent face localizer to isolate
fusiform face area (FFA) regions, we did not include chess or ran-
dom chess to localize FFAs, thereby leaving chess as an independent
category to be evaluated.
We also isolated chess regions using a chess minus random chess
contrast between groups. To carry out a subject-specific ROI anal-
yses, we ran this contrast on each group independently (p < .001
uncorrected, 10 voxel cluster minimum). This contrast showed no
significant clusters in novices. In experts, this contrast resulted
in two clusters within the posterior cingulate (MNI coordinates:
x = 32, y = 10, z = 12) and the right insula (x = 12, y = −50, z = 10). To
further isolate chess responses we defined ROIs at the individual
level. Five of the experts showed significant activation within the
66 D.C. Krawczyk et al. / Neuroscience Letters 499 (2011) 64–69
posterior cingulate (between x = −12 to 13; y = −66 to −24, and
z = −2 to 39). These individual subject ROIs were corrected between
FWE p < .01 and FDR p < .05. We did not perform an ROI analysis on
the right insula as there were no spatially consistent clusters within
this region for a majority of the experts.
ROI data were extracted and converted to percent-signal change
for each subject using MarsBar (sourceforge.net/projects/marsbar).
These data were then analyzed using 2 group × 5 condition ANOVAs
and pairwise contrasts to evaluate face perception versus each of
the other four conditions for the FFAs [10] and occipital face areas
(OFAs) [27] and to evaluate chess processing versus face, object, and
scene processing for the posterior cingulate (Bonferroni corrected
t-tests within each ROI).
The experts indicated that they could perceive all or most of the
chess boards within 2 s. Several reported that random chess was
more difficult to perceive than real chess. Novices reported that
they could rarely perceive all of the pieces and none reported that
they were aware that the random games were impossible according
to the rules of chess, a distinction all experts readily reported.
Accuracy was similar for both groups for all categories
except for chess. Experts and novices exhibited high accu-
racy on faces (experts M = 97.92%, SD = 5.10; novices M = 95.83%,
SD = 7.57), scrambled chess (experts M = 91.67%, SD = 3.23; novices
M = 91.67%, SD = 7.57), scenes (experts M = 76.04%, SD = 20.70;
novices M = 94.79%, SD = 7.31) and objects (experts M = 95.83%,
SD = 7.57; novices M = 100.00%, SD = 0). The only significant group
difference was that experts (M = 97.92%, SD = 3.23) were more accu-
rate at detecting repeats of chess boards than novices (M = 87.50%,
SD = 13.69). This was confirmed by an independent samples t-test,
t(10) = 1.81, p < .05. No other performance differences were signif-
icant between the groups, though the experts were numerically
lower on scene recognition performance than the novices.
FMRI activation comparisons of each category were carried out
using 2 × 5 ANOVAs for each ROI. All four ANOVAs reached sig-
nificance for both group and category effects, but few showed
group by category interactions. Within the Left FFA the effect of
group was significant with novices showing higher mean percent
signal change (M = 1.03) than experts (M = 0.69), F(1, 9) = 33.97,
p < .001 (see Fig. 2A). Additionally, the effect of category was also
significant, F(4, 36) = 34.03, p < .001. The right FFA showed sim-
ilar effects with novices showing higher percent signal change
(M = 0.94) than experts (M = 0.80), F(1, 10) = 56.17, p < .001. There
was a significant category effect, F(4, 40) = 31.45, p < .001. In the
left OFA novices showed higher percent signal change (M = 1.48)
than experts (M = 1.16), F(1, 8) = 47.36, p < .001 with a significant
category effect, F(4, 32) = 17.20, p < .001. The left OFA showed a sig-
nificant group by category interaction F(4, 32) = 6.81, p < .001. This
interaction indicated that experts showed greater face selectivity in
the left OFA, while novices showed more left OFA activation to both
of the chess categories. Lastly, the right OFA showed a significant
group effect with experts showing a higher mean percent signal
change (M = 1.20) than novices (M = 1.11), F(1, 7) = 53.95, p < .001.
There was also a significant effect of category F(4, 28) = 26.72,
p < .001. To further understand the within category effects we fol-
lowed up with post hoc comparisons.
In the experts, post hoc comparisons (p < .05) indicated that
face perception activated the face-selective ROIs more than each
of the other categories, and all ROIs responded more strongly to
faces than chess game configurations, driving the effects. In the left
FFA activation to faces (M = 1.27) was significantly greater than to
chess (M = 0.48), scenes (M = 0.20) and objects (M = 0.82). The face
and random chess (M = 0.70) comparison did not reach significance
(p = .067). In the right FFA, face activation (M = 1.47) was signifi-
cantly greater than activation for chess (M = 0.73), scenes (M = 0.21)
and objects (M = 0.79). The comparison of face and random chess
(M = 0.80) conditions did not reach significance when corrected
for multiple comparisons (p = .019). In the left OFA, face activation
(M = 2.02) was significantly greater than for chess (M = 0.86), ran-
dom chess (M = 1.15), scenes (M = 0.54), and the objects (M = 1.24).
The right OFA showed greater activation to faces (M = 1.93) over
chess (M = 1.22) and objects (M = 1.18) (see Fig. 2).
Post hoc comparisons for novices (p < .05) revealed that the left
FFA activation to faces (M = 1.47) was significantly greater than
to chess (M = 0.98), scenes (M = 0.59) and objects (M = 0.93). The
face and random chess (M = 1.18) comparison did not reach sig-
nificance (p = .10). The right FFA was significantly more active in
response to faces (M = 1.48) than chess (M = 0.85), random chess
(M = 1.03), scenes (M = 0.54) and objects (M = 0.82). In the left OFA,
face activation (M = 1.48) was significantly greater than for scenes
(M = 0.60) and objects (M = 0.81). The right OFA showed a simi-
lar pattern, with greater activation to faces (M = 1.32) over scenes
(M = 0.38) and objects (M = 0.86). Thus faces were predominantly
active over other categories leading to the significant category
effect.
We directly compared the groups on the chess minus ran-
dom chess contrast using a random-effects fMRI group analysis
(uncorrected p < .001, 20 voxel minimum) (refer to Fig. 1B and C).
Significant differences emerged with experts showing greater acti-
vation in the left orbitofrontal cortex (x = −4, y = 58, z = −2), in the
left (x = −10, y = −50, z = 12) and right posterior cingulate (x = 14,
y = −52, z = 2), and in the left anterior temporal cortex (x = −50, y = 8,
z = −26). By contrast, the novices showed greater activation than
experts in two distinct clusters in right parietal cortex (x = −32,
y = −52, z = 40) and (x = −38, y = −54, z = 46).
To further analyze the chess-related areas we performed
contrasts on each group independently, subtracting activation
of random chess from chess. This analysis revealed two clus-
ters within the posterior cingulate and the right insula within
the experts (uncorrected p < .001), but no significant clusters in
the novices. We then conducted individual ROI analyses on the
posterior cingulate areas of the experts. Percent signal change
comparisons in this area resulted in a significant overall repeated
measures ANOVA, F(4, 20) = 4.29, p < .05. Post hoc comparisons
(evaluated at p < .05) revealed greater activation for chess (M = .28)
compared to faces (M = −.48), random chess (M = −.78), objects
(M = −.56), and scenes (M = −.46) (refer to Fig. 2B).
Though expert chess players possess high levels of visual famil-
iarity with chess configurations, the brain areas most sensitive to
face perception showed no evidence of greater relative activation
in response to such configurations. Experts showed an advantage
over novices in detecting repeats of valid chess configurations.
This is consistent with the advantage previously observed between
experts and novices in memory for chess configurations [10,6,15].
While the detection task was simple, this difference was likely sig-
nificant due to the exceptionally high performance of the experts.
Notably, both groups performed well at recognition overall, but this
difference alone differentiated the two. Experts also reported that
they were able to perceive most or all of the valid chess boards
within the brief exposure period, while novices did not report this
ability. There was a numerical trend toward lower accuracy in
matching scene stimuli within the experts compared to novices.
While this was non-significant, it suggests that there may be some
differentiation in recognition of non-face and non-chess stimuli
within experts and novices, which may be addressed in future
research.
Chess board configurations appear to be different from facial
configurations in terms of both perception and neural organization
for experts. While there have been prior reports that chess board
processing and face processing involve overlapping brain areas,
notably the right FFA, our findings do not support this view. There
may be instances in which face-sensitive areas respond to chess
stimuli [21,24], but our results indicate that this does not reflect
 D.C. Krawczyk et al. / Neuroscience Letters 499 (2011) 64–69 67

Fig. 2. (A) ROI results from face selective areas, the FFA and OFA. Graphs present brain activation averages from each visual category plotted by region. All four face-selective
areas showed significantly greater activation for faces than for chess boards. (B) ROI results from the posterior cingulate defined by subtracting random chess from real chess
displays. The activation was significantly greater for chess boards over each of the other categories.

basic perceptual processing of the type that was examined in the
present study and in most prior studies that have established the
existence of the fusiform face area [13,18]. While processing con-
figural patterns is known to be important in both face perception
and expert chess board perception [2,23], such processing need not
rely on the same neural mechanisms. Further, we did not observe
clear reductions in FFA activation either in chess experts or in
chess novices. Such a finding would be consistent with neural plas-
ticity dedifferentiating standard face expertise responses [8,22].
Similarly, within the OFA areas our results showed face selectiv-
ity, absent of modulation based on any other category strongly
within experts, and approximately equivalent activation toward
faces, chess, random chess, and objects over scenes in the novice
group, possibly due to differences in attention demands among the
68 D.C. Krawczyk et al. / Neuroscience Letters 499 (2011) 64–69
categories in the task. Our results are most consistent with the posi-
tion that chess and face expertise are processed independently as
measured by modulation of fusiform responses in experts.
We also found evidence among the chess experts of areas related
to processing chess boards over random boards within the posterior
cingulate, an area of the left orbitofrontal cortex, the left anterior
temporal cortex, and the right insula at the group level. The orbital
and anterior temporal regions have been associated with emotional
and motivational processing, as well as linking emotion to reason-
ing [16]. The region of interest analysis of the posterior cingulate
suggested that this area was reliably associated with only chess
board processing relative to the other categories including faces.
The posterior cingulate has previously been associated with an
fMRI comparison of partial chess game boards to geometric shape
displays in chess experts [3]. It has also been associated with the
default mode network of the brain [16,25] which relates to self-
directed thinking as well as semantic memory retrieval. Given the
simplicity of our task instruction and the extensive expertise of our
subjects, it is not possible to determine the precise role the poste-
rior cingulate plays in chess-related cognition, but activation of this
area is consistent with memory retrieval of game configurations, or
self-directed thinking about chess during the time these displays
were evaluated. Notably, the posterior cingulate ROIs were not sig-
nificantly active in novices and in experts were not active during
perception and evaluation of any of the other stimulus categories
we used in this experiment including faces. Future work will be
needed to clarify the cognitive functions associated with this region
in chess experts. It will also be valuable to determine whether this
same area is active in other more demanding chess tasks.
There was some differential activation of the left parietal cortex
in novices over experts associated with real game chess processing.
The parietal lobes have been associated with spatial processing pre-
viously [3], suggesting that this activation may have been related to
a greater level of visual location search than occurred for the expert
group. The left temporo-parietal junction showed evidence of chess
modulation in experts. This is an area that has been associated with
integration of visual features, thus providing the clearest evidence
of a perceptually driven neural change related to chess expertise.
To put our results in the context of the broader question of
how the neural basis of expertise operates, it is worthwhile to con-
sider studies from the literature on word perception and literacy.
Words have been shown to produce highly specific neural effects
that depend on specific configurations, such as the presence of
vowels versus consonants [5]. Likewise, our comparison of scram-
bled versus real chess board configurations elicited expert effects
within the posterior cingulate that were specific to real chess games
only, consistent with the classic behavioral effects showing effects
limited to chess games over scrambled boards. Further, priming
effects vary depending on specific material types [20]. Similarly,
cortical regions sensitive to face processing showed face selectiv-
ity without overlap with chess. On the other hand, other recent
work has indicated a different pattern brought about by reading
experience. Dehaene et al. [8] recently reported that reading expe-
rience shows evidence of domain general effects in V1, temporal,
and fusiform cortex, as literacy increased overall neural responses
in these areas. These contrasting results indicate that caution must
be taken when considering the neural basis of expertise, as domain
specificity within neural responses appears to vary based on the
specific skills acquired. The results we report are limited to basic
chess recognition and are preliminary. Future work varying lev-
els expertise and a greater range of chess tasks may further clarify
neural changes for chess expertise.
These results leave open a variety of intriguing routes for future
investigations. Chess configurations, unlike face configurations, are
movable and almost surely differ from faces in the manner in which
attention is allocated toward areas of the stimulus, with experts
tending to plan a next move [11], assess which side is winning [1],
and recognize patterns that they have experienced before [4]. Sev-
eral of these cognitive factors may lead to perceptual differences
between faces and chess at both behavioral and neural levels of
analysis. It may be particularly interesting to test individuals with
varying degrees of chess experience in future work, as the neural
representations of chess may undergo alterations accompanying
the acquisition of greater fluency with chess configurations [19].
The neural basis of chess perception may also change with vari-
ations in the capacity and need for visualization of the patterns
occurring within chess games.
Acknowledgments
We thank James Stallings and the Chess Program at UT Dallas
for their continued support of our research. We also thank Michael
Motes for neuroimaging assistance. This work was supported by a
UT Dallas Catalyst Grant.
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