There has been a controversy on the neural basis of processing animacy. Proponents of the majority view argue that regions in the social network of the brain mediate social processing. These regions include medial prefrontal cortex (MPC), cingulate cortex (CC), amygdala, and superior temporal sulcus (STS).

For the past two decades, there has been a controversy over the purpose of the fusiform face area (FFA), located in the fusiform gyrus, in the brain. Neuroscientists have been debating whether the FFA is activated by faces for evolutionary or expertise reasons.

For decades, there has been a controversy on whether visual spatial attention modulates activity in V1 and extrastriate cortex, which includes V2, V3, and V4. Proponents of the majority view initially thought that activity in V1 was not modulated by attention.

There has been a controversy on whether the visual word form area (VWFA) is specialized for processing visual word processing. Proponents of the majority view suggested that the VWFA is specialized for processing visual words and word-like stimuli independent of language.