Long-term Expertise with Artificial Objects Increases Visual Competition with Early Face Categorization Processes

The degree of commonality between the perceptual mechanisms involved in processing faces and objects of expertise is intensely debated. To clarify this issue, we recorded occipito-temporal event-related potentials in response to faces when concurrently processing visual objects of expertise. In car experts fixating pictures of cars, we observed a large decrease of an evoked potential elicited by face stimuli between 130 and 200 msec, the N170. This sensory suppression was much lower when the car and face stimuli were separated by a 200-msec blank interval. With and without this delay, there was a strong correlation between the face-evoked N170 amplitude decrease and the subject's level of car expertise as measured in an independent behavioral task. Together, these results show that neural representations of faces and nonface objects in a domain of expertise compete for visual processes in the occipito-temporal cortex as early as 130–200 msec following stimulus onset.

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Activation of Preexisting and Acquired Face Representations: The N250 Event-related Potential as an Index of Face Familiarity

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2006.18.9.1488 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 18 (9) ◽

pp. 1488-1497 ◽

Cited By ~ 226

Author(s):

James W. Tanaka ◽

Tim Curran ◽

Albert L. Porterfield ◽

Daniel Collins

Keyword(s):

Time Course ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Same Sex ◽

Face Representation ◽

Learning Conditions ◽

Electrophysiological Studies ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Face Stimuli

Electrophysiological studies using event-related potentials have demonstrated that face stimuli elicit a greater negative brain potential in right posterior recording sites 170 msec after stimulus onset (N170) relative to nonface stimuli. Results from repetition priming paradigms have shown that repeated exposures of familiar faces elicit a larger negative brainwave (N250r) at inferior temporal sites compared to repetitions of unfamiliar faces. However, less is known about the time course and learning conditions under which the N250 face representation is acquired. In the familiarization phase of the Joe/no Joe task, subjects studied a target “Joe” face (“Jane” for female subjects) and, during the course of the experiment, identified a series of sequentially presented faces as either Joe or not Joe. The critical stimulus conditions included the subject's own face, a same-sex Joe ( Jane) face and a same-sex “other” face. The main finding was that the subject's own face produced a focal negative deflection (N250) in posterior channels relative to nontarget faces. The task-relevant Joe target face was not differentiated from other nontarget faces in the first half of the experiment. However, in the second half, the Joe face produced an N250 response that was similar in magnitude to the own face. These findings suggest that the N250 indexes two types of face memories: a preexperimentally familiar face representation (i.e., the “own face” and a newly acquired face representation (i.e., the Joe/Jane face) that was formed during the course of the experiment.

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Electrophysiological correlates of unconscious processes of race

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-91133-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Francesca Pesciarelli ◽

Irene Leo ◽

Luana Serafini

Keyword(s):

Reaction Times ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Unconscious Processes ◽

Race Effect ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Face Stimuli ◽

The Brain ◽

Prime Target

AbstractThe study aimed to examine the neural mechanisms underlying implicit other-race face processing by the use of the masked and unmasked priming manipulation. Two types of prime-target pairs were presented while recording Event-related potentials (ERPs): Same face pairs (prime-target were identical faces), and Different face pairs (prime-target were different faces). Prime-target pairs were half Asian (other-race) and half Caucasian (own-race) faces. The face stimuli on each pair were of the same gender and race. Participants (all Caucasians) had to decide whether the target was a male or a female face (gender task). The prime face could be unmasked or masked. On the behavioral side, our findings showed a race effect, that is slower reaction times (RTs) for other-race than own-race face stimuli, regardless of masking. On the ERPs side, our data showed a race effect across all components analyzed (P100, N100, N200, P300), under both the unmasked and masked manipulations. Besides, we found, in the unmasked condition, a priming effect as a function of race on the N100, N200, and P300 components; but, interestingly, in the masked condition, only on the P300. Overall, our findings provide evidence that race information is available very early in the brain and can strongly activate and influence people’s behaviors even without conscious awareness.

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The Effects of Dynamic and Static Emotional Facial Expressions of Humans and Their Avatars on the EEG: An ERP and ERD/ERS Study

Frontiers in Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnins.2021.651044 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Teresa Sollfrank ◽

Oona Kohnen ◽

Peter Hilfiker ◽

Lorena C. Kegel ◽

Hennric Jokeit ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Emotional Facial Expressions ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Dynamic Facial Expressions ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Face Stimuli ◽

Human Faces ◽

Healthy Participants

This study aimed to examine whether the cortical processing of emotional faces is modulated by the computerization of face stimuli (”avatars”) in a group of 25 healthy participants. Subjects were passively viewing 128 static and dynamic facial expressions of female and male actors and their respective avatars in neutral or fearful conditions. Event-related potentials (ERPs), as well as alpha and theta event-related synchronization and desynchronization (ERD/ERS), were derived from the EEG that was recorded during the task. All ERP features, except for the very early N100, differed in their response to avatar and actor faces. Whereas the N170 showed differences only for the neutral avatar condition, later potentials (N300 and LPP) differed in both emotional conditions (neutral and fear) and the presented agents (actor and avatar). In addition, we found that the avatar faces elicited significantly stronger reactions than the actor face for theta and alpha oscillations. Especially theta EEG frequencies responded specifically to visual emotional stimulation and were revealed to be sensitive to the emotional content of the face, whereas alpha frequency was modulated by all the stimulus types. We can conclude that the computerized avatar faces affect both, ERP components and ERD/ERS and evoke neural effects that are different from the ones elicited by real faces. This was true, although the avatars were replicas of the human faces and contained similar characteristics in their expression.

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Localizing Visual Discrimination Processes in Time and Space

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.2002.88.4.2088 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 88 (4) ◽

pp. 2088-2095 ◽

Cited By ~ 124

Author(s):

Jens-Max Hopf ◽

Edward Vogel ◽

Geoffrey Woodman ◽

Hans-Jochen Heinze ◽

Steven J. Luck

Keyword(s):

Visual Processing ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Magnetic Resonance Images ◽

Time And Space ◽

Simple Detection ◽

Related Potentials ◽

N1 Wave ◽

Anatomical Constraints

Previous studies of visual processing in humans using event-related potentials (ERPs) have demonstrated that task-related modulations of an early component called the “N1” wave (140–200 ms) reflect the operation of a voluntary discrimination process. Specifically, this component is larger in tasks requiring target discrimination than in tasks requiring simple detection. The present study was designed to localize this discriminative process in both time and space by means of combined magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and ERP recordings. Discriminative processing led to differential ERP and MEG activity beginning within 150 ms of stimulus onset. Source localization of the combined ERP/MEG data was performed using anatomical constraints from structural magnetic resonance images. These analyses revealed highly reliable and focused activity in regions of inferior occipital-temporal cortex. These findings indicate that the earliest measurable correlates of discriminative operations in the visual system appear as neural activity in circumscribed regions of the ventral processing stream.

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The effect of empathy and context on face-processing ERPs

10.31234/osf.io/ns3wt ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Gillian M Clark ◽

Claire McNeel ◽

Felicity J Bigelow ◽

Peter Gregory Enticott

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Background Information ◽

Early Posterior Negativity ◽

Empathy Quotient ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Processing Event ◽

Harm To Others ◽

Face Stimuli

The investigation of emotional face processing has largely used faces devoid of context, and does not account for within-perceiver differences in empathy. The importance of context in face perception has become apparent in recent years. This study examined the interaction of the contextual factors of facial expression, knowledge of a person’s character, and within-perceiver empathy levels on face processing event-related potentials (ERPs). Forty-two adult participants learned background information about six individuals’ character. Three types of character were described, in which the character was depicted as deliberately causing harm to others, accidentally causing harm to others, or undertaking neutral actions. Subsequently, EEG was recorded while participants viewed the characters’ faces displaying neutral or emotional expressions. Participants’ empathy was assessed using the Empathy Quotient survey. Results showed a significant interaction of character type and empathy on the early posterior negativity (EPN) ERP component. These results suggested that for those with either low or high empathy, more attention was paid to the face stimuli, with more distinction between the different characters. In contrast, those in the middle range of empathy tended to produce smaller EPN with less distinction between character types. Findings highlight the importance of trait empathy in accounting for how faces in context are perceived.

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Rapid responses of amygdala neurons discriminate facial expressions

10.1101/174037 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mikio Inagaki ◽

Ichiro Fujita

Keyword(s):

Visual Information ◽

Electrophysiological Study ◽

Critical Role ◽

Temporal Cortex ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Excitatory Input ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Subcortical Pathway

SummaryThe amygdala plays a critical role in detecting potential danger through sensory input [1, 2]. In the primate visual system, a subcortical pathway through the superior colliculus and the pulvinar is thought to provide the amygdala with rapid and coarse visual information about facial emotions [3–6]. A recent electrophysiological study in human patients supported this hypothesis by showing that intracranial event-related potentials discriminated fearful faces from other faces very quickly (within ∼74 ms) [7]. However, several aspects of the hypothesis remain debatable [8]. Critically, evidence for short-latency, emotion-selective responses from individual amygdala neurons is lacking [9–12], and even if this type of response existed, how it might contribute to stimulus detection is unclear. Here, we addressed these issues in the monkey amygdala and found that ensemble responses of single neurons carry robust information about emotional faces— especially threatening ones—within ∼50 ms after stimulus onset. Similar rapid response was not found in the temporal cortex from which the amygdala receives cortical inputs [13], suggesting a subcortical origin. Additionally, we found that the rapid amygdala response contained excitatory and suppressive components. The early excitatory component might be useful for quickly sending signals to downstream areas. In contrast, the rapid suppressive component sharpened the rising phase of later, sustained excitatory input (presumably from the temporal cortex) and might therefore improve processing of emotional faces over time. We thus propose that these two amygdala responses that originate from the subcortical pathway play dual roles in threat detection.

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Orienting and Focusing in Voluntary and Involuntary Visuospatial Attention Conditions

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 198-209 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Yan Wang ◽

Jianhui Wu ◽

Shimin Fu ◽

Yuejia Luo

Keyword(s):

Gain Control ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Orientation Discrimination ◽

Involuntary Attention ◽

Attention Condition ◽

Voluntary Attention ◽

Visual Spatial ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Underlying Mechanisms

In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measurements in a peripherally cued line-orientation discrimination task to investigate the underlying mechanisms of orienting and focusing in voluntary and involuntary attention conditions. Informative peripheral cue (75% valid) with long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used in the voluntary attention condition; uninformative peripheral cue (50% valid) with short SOA was used in the involuntary attention condition. Both orienting and focusing were affected by attention type. Results for attention orienting in the voluntary attention condition confirmed the “sensory gain control theory,” as attention enhanced the amplitude of the early ERP components, P1 and N1, without latency changes. In the involuntary attention condition, compared with invalid trials, targets in the valid trials elicited larger and later contralateral P1 components, and smaller and later contralateral N1 components. Furthermore, but only in the voluntary attention condition, targets in the valid trials elicited larger N2 and P3 components than in the invalid trials. Attention focusing in the involuntary attention condition resulted in larger P1 components elicited by targets in small-cue trials compared to large-cue trials, whereas in the voluntary attention condition, larger P1 components were elicited by targets in large-cue trials than in small-cue trials. There was no interaction between orienting and focusing. These results suggest that orienting and focusing of visual-spatial attention are deployed independently regardless of attention type. In addition, the present results provide evidence of dissociation between voluntary and involuntary attention during the same task.

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Charged With a Crime: The Neuronal Signature of Processing Negatively Evaluated Faces Under Different Attentional Conditions

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797621996667 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 095679762199666

Author(s):

Sebastian Schindler ◽

Maximilian Bruchmann ◽

Claudia Krasowski ◽

Robert Moeck ◽

Thomas Straube

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Emotional Information ◽

Early Posterior Negativity ◽

Information Studies ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Feature Based ◽

Human Faces ◽

Emotional Knowledge ◽

Late Stages

Our brains rapidly respond to human faces and can differentiate between many identities, retrieving rich semantic emotional-knowledge information. Studies provide a mixed picture of how such information affects event-related potentials (ERPs). We systematically examined the effect of feature-based attention on ERP modulations to briefly presented faces of individuals associated with a crime. The tasks required participants ( N = 40 adults) to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the face, the age of the face, or emotional information associated with the face. Negative faces amplified the N170 ERP component during all tasks, whereas the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components were increased only when the emotional information was attended to. These findings suggest that during early configural analyses (N170), evaluative information potentiates face processing regardless of feature-based attention. During intermediate, only partially resource-dependent, processing stages (EPN) and late stages of elaborate stimulus processing (LPP), attention to the acquired emotional information is necessary for amplified processing of negatively evaluated faces.

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Characterizing pinprick-evoked brain potentials before and after experimentally induced secondary hyperalgesia

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00444.2015 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 114 (5) ◽

pp. 2672-2681 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Emanuel N. van den Broeke ◽

André Mouraux ◽

Antonia H. Groneberg ◽

Doreen B. Pfau ◽

Rolf-Detlef Treede ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Secondary Hyperalgesia ◽

Brain Potentials ◽

Nociceptive Pathways ◽

Before And After ◽

Pain Ratings ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Positive Complex ◽

Stimulation Of

Secondary hyperalgesia is believed to be a key feature of “central sensitization” and is characterized by enhanced pain to mechanical nociceptive stimuli. The aim of the present study was to characterize, using EEG, the effects of pinprick stimulation intensity on the magnitude of pinprick-elicited brain potentials [event-related potentials (ERPs)] before and after secondary hyperalgesia induced by intradermal capsaicin in humans. Pinprick-elicited ERPs and pinprick-evoked pain ratings were recorded in 19 healthy volunteers, with mechanical pinprick stimuli of varying intensities (0.25-mm probe applied with a force extending between 16 and 512 mN). The recordings were performed before (T0) and 30 min after (T1) intradermal capsaicin injection. The contralateral noninjected arm served as control. ERPs elicited by stimulation of untreated skin were characterized by 1) an early-latency negative-positive complex peaking between 120 and 250 ms after stimulus onset (N120-P240) and maximal at the vertex and 2) a long-lasting positive wave peaking 400–600 ms after stimulus onset and maximal more posterior (P500), which was correlated to perceived pinprick pain. After capsaicin injection, pinprick stimuli were perceived as more intense in the area of secondary hyperalgesia and this effect was stronger for lower compared with higher stimulus intensities. In addition, there was an enhancement of the P500 elicited by stimuli of intermediate intensity, which was significant for 64 mN. The other components of the ERPs were unaffected by capsaicin. Our results suggest that the increase in P500 magnitude after capsaicin is mediated by facilitated mechanical nociceptive pathways.

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Duration Estimation of Angry and Neutral Faces: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Correlates

Timing & Time Perception ◽

10.1163/22134468-bja10020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (3-4) ◽

pp. 254-278

Author(s):

Lisa V. Eberhardt ◽

Ferdinand Pittino ◽

Anna Scheins ◽

Anke Huckauf ◽

Markus Kiefer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotional Processing ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Emotional Stimuli ◽

Information Processing Model ◽

Emotional Faces ◽

Early Posterior Negativity ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Offset ◽

Duration Estimation

Abstract Emotional stimuli like emotional faces have been frequently shown to be temporally overestimated compared to neutral ones. This effect has been commonly explained by induced arousal caused by emotional processing leading to the acceleration of an inner-clock-like pacemaker. However, there are some studies reporting contradictory effects and others point to relevant moderating variables. Given this controversy, we aimed at investigating the processes underlying the temporal overestimation of emotional faces by combining behavioral and electrophysiological correlates in a temporal bisection task. We assessed duration estimation of angry and neutral faces using anchor durations of 400 ms and 1600 ms while recording event-related potentials. Subjective ratings and the early posterior negativity confirmed encoding and processing of stimuli’s emotionality. However, temporal ratings did not differ between angry and neutral faces. In line with this behavioral result, the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV), an electrophysiological index of temporal accumulation, was not modulated by the faces’ emotionality. Duration estimates, i.e., short or long responses toward stimuli of ambiguous durations of 1000 ms, were nevertheless associated with a differential CNV amplitude. Interestingly, CNV modulation was already observed at 600–700 ms after stimulus onset, i.e., long before stimulus offset. The results are discussed in light of the information-processing model of time perception as well as regarding possible factors of the experimental setup moderating temporal overestimation of emotional stimuli. In sum, combining behavioral and electrophysiological measures seems promising to more clearly understand the complex processes leading to the illusion of temporal lengthening of emotional faces.

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