Double Dissociation between Overt and Covert Face Recognition

1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Tranel ◽  
Hanna Damasio ◽  
Antonio R. Damasio

Some patients with face agnosia (prosopagnosia) caused by occipitotemporal damage produce discriminatory covert responses to the familiar faces that they fail to identify overtly. For example, their average skin conductance responses (SCRs) to familiar faces are significantly larger than average SCRs to unfamiliar faces. In this study we describe the opposite dissociation in four patients with bilateral ventromedial frontal damage: The patients recognized the identity of familiar faces normally, yet failed to generate discriminatory SCRs to those same familiar faces. Taken together, the two sets of results constitute a double dissociation: bilateral occipitotemporal damage impairs recognition but allows SCR discrimination, whereas bilateral ventromedial damage causes the opposite. The findings suggest that the neural systems that process the somatic-based valence of stimuli are separate from and parallel to the neural systems that process the factual, nonsomatic information associated with the same stimuli.

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Bonifacci ◽  
Lorenzo Desideri ◽  
Cristina Ottaviani

Where does the experience of familiarity come from? Is it the same as sensory perception? Two novel approaches were combined to investigate the highly adaptive process of familiar face recognition: the inclusion of friends and family members as personally familiar faces and measures of eye movements and skin conductance responses (SCR). A sample of 16 university students was asked to look at photographs of 8 personally familiar faces (friends and relatives) and 8 unfamiliar faces. From the analysis of eye movement patterns, a preference for internal features (mouth, eyes, nose) for both familiar and unfamiliar faces emerged and a significant increase in electrodermal activity was found for personally familiar compared to unfamiliar faces. Higher SCR recovery values were found in response to friends. Findings from this exploratory investigation suggest that familiar faces are not looked at in a special way; instead we “feel” a sense of familiarity that comes and goes faster for relatives than for close friends.


1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. D. Ellis ◽  
A. W. Young ◽  
G. Koenken

An experiment is reported where subjects were presented with familiar or unfamiliar faces for supraliminal durations or for durations individually assessed as being below the threshold for recognition. Their electrodermal responses to each stimulus were measured and the results showed higher peak amplitude skin conductance responses for familiar than for unfamiliar faces, regardless of whether they had been displayed supraliminally or subliminally. A parallel is drawn between elevated skin conductance responses to subliminal stimuli and findings of covert recognition of familiar faces in prosopagnosic patients, some of whom show increased electrodermal activity (EDA) to previously familiar faces. The supraliminal presentation data also served to replicate similar work by Tranel et al (1985). The results are considered alongside other data indicating the relation between non-conscious, “automatic” aspects of normal visual information processing and abilities which can be found to be preserved without awareness after brain injury.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (05) ◽  
pp. 1313-1329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Kreyßig ◽  
Agnieszka Ewa Krautz

AbstractMultiple studies on bilingualism and emotions have demonstrated that a native language carries greater emotional valence than the second language. This distinction appears to have consequences for other types of behavior, including lying. As bilingual lying has not been explored extensively, the current study investigated the psychophysiological differences between German (native language) and English (second language) in the lying process as well as in the perception of lies. The skin conductance responses of 26 bilinguals were measured during reading aloud true and false statements and listening to recorded correct and wrong assertions. The analysis revealed a lie effect, that is, statistically significant differences between valid and fictitious sentences. In addition, the values in German were higher compared to those in English, in accordance with the blunted emotional response account (Caldwell-Harris & Aycicegi-Dinn, 2009). Finally, the skin conductance responses were lower in the listening condition in comparison to the reading aloud. The results, however, are treated with caution given the fact that skin conductance monitoring does not allow assigning heightened reactivity of the skin to one exclusive cause. The responses may have been equally induced by the content of the statements, which prompted positive or negative associations in the participants’ minds or by the specific task requirements.


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 1749-1754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Laine ◽  
Kevin M. Spitler ◽  
Clayton P. Mosher ◽  
Katalin M. Gothard

The amygdala plays a crucial role in evaluating the emotional significance of stimuli and in transforming the results of this evaluation into appropriate autonomic responses. Lesion and stimulation studies suggest involvement of the amygdala in the generation of the skin conductance response (SCR), which is an indirect measure of autonomic activity that has been associated with both emotion and attention. It is unclear if this involvement marks an emotional reaction to an external stimulus or sympathetic arousal regardless of its origin. We recorded skin conductance in parallel with single-unit activity from the right amygdala of two rhesus monkeys during a rewarded image viewing task and while the monkeys sat alone in a dimly lit room, drifting in and out of sleep. In both experimental conditions, we found similar SCR-related modulation of activity at the single-unit and neural population level. This suggests that the amygdala contributes to the production or modulation of SCRs regardless of the source of sympathetic arousal.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. e13307 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Sjouwerman ◽  
T. B. Lonsdorf

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-16
Author(s):  
Catarina Iria ◽  
Fernando Barbosa ◽  
Rui Paixão

Abstract. A group of offenders with antisocial personality (ASP) and a control group identified facial expressions of emotion under three conditions: monetary reward, monetary response cost, and no contingency, to explore effects on the antisocial offenders’ deficits commonly reported in these tasks. Skin Conductance Responses (SCRs) indexed emotional arousal. Offenders with ASP performed worse than controls under reward and no contingency conditions, but under the response-cost condition results were similar. The offenders with ASP presented higher SCR than the controls in the two monetary conditions. Findings suggest that offenders with ASP are hypersensitive to monetary contingencies; monetary reward seems to interfere negatively in their performance while monetary response cost improves it. Arousal level seems unable to explain ability to identify facial affects, while results suggest that methodological variations may explain the conflicting results in the literature.


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