Category learning—learning to sort a set of stimuli into categories or groups—can induce category biases in perception such that items in the same category are perceived as more similar than items from different categories. To what degree category bias develops when learning goals emphasize individuation of each stimulus and whether the bias emerges spontaneously during learning itself rather than in response to task demands is unclear. Here, we used functional MRI during encoding to test for category biases in neural representations of individual stimuli during learning. Human participants (males and females) encountered face-blend stimuli with unique first names and shared family names that indicated category membership. Participants were instructed to learn the full name for each face. Neural pattern classification and pattern similarity analyses were used to track category information in the brain. Results showed that stimulus category could be decoded during encoding across many frontal, parietal and ...