Face Familiarity Decisions Take 200 msec in the Human Brain: Electrophysiological Evidence from a Go/No-go Speeded Task

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Caharel ◽  
Meike Ramon ◽  
Bruno Rossion

Recognizing a familiar face rapidly is a fundamental human brain function. Here we used scalp EEG to determine the minimal time needed to classify a face as personally familiar or unfamiliar. Go (familiar) and no-go (unfamiliar) responses elicited clear differential waveforms from 210 msec onward, this difference being first observed at right occipito-temporal electrode sites. Similar but delayed (by about 40 msec) responses were observed when go response were required to the unfamiliar rather than familiar faces, in a second group of participants. In both groups, a small increase of amplitude was also observed on the right hemisphere N170 face-sensitive component for familiar faces. However, unlike the post-200 msec differential go/no-go effect, this effect was unrelated to behavior and disappeared with repetition of unfamiliar faces. These observations indicate that accumulation of evidence within the first 200 msec poststimulus onset is sufficient for the human brain to decide whether a person is familiar based on his or her face, a time frame that puts strong constraints on the time course of face processing.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 960
Author(s):  
Mina Kheirkhah ◽  
Philipp Baumbach ◽  
Lutz Leistritz ◽  
Otto W. Witte ◽  
Martin Walter ◽  
...  

Studies investigating human brain response to emotional stimuli—particularly high-arousing versus neutral stimuli—have obtained inconsistent results. The present study was the first to combine magnetoencephalography (MEG) with the bootstrapping method to examine the whole brain and identify the cortical regions involved in this differential response. Seventeen healthy participants (11 females, aged 19 to 33 years; mean age, 26.9 years) were presented with high-arousing emotional (pleasant and unpleasant) and neutral pictures, and their brain responses were measured using MEG. When random resampling bootstrapping was performed for each participant, the greatest differences between high-arousing emotional and neutral stimuli during M300 (270–320 ms) were found to occur in the right temporo-parietal region. This finding was observed in response to both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. The results, which may be more robust than previous studies because of bootstrapping and examination of the whole brain, reinforce the essential role of the right hemisphere in emotion processing.


Open Medicine ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zlatislav Stoyanov ◽  
Lyoubka Decheva ◽  
Irina Pashalieva ◽  
Piareta Nikolova

AbstractThe principle of symmetry-asymmetry is widely presented in the structural and functional organization of the nonliving and living nature. One of the most complex manifestations of this principle is the left-right asymmetry of the human brain. The present review summarizes previous and contemporary literary data regarding the role of brain asymmetry in neuroimmunomodulation. Some handedness-related peculiarities are outlined additionally. Brain asymmetry is considered to be imprinted in the formation and regulation of the individual’s responses and relationships at an immunological level with the external and internal environment. The assumptions that the hemispheres modulate immune response in an asymmetric manner have been confirmed in experiments on animals. Some authors assume that the right hemisphere plays an indirect role in neuroimmunomodulation, controlling and suppressing the left hemispheric inductive signals.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiichi Shimamura ◽  
Takeshi Inoue ◽  
Hiroko Ichikawa ◽  
Emi Nakato ◽  
Yuiko Sakuta ◽  
...  

Abstract Background School-age children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties in interpersonal relationships, in addition to impaired facial expression perception and recognition. For successful social interactions, the ability to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar faces is critical. However, there are no published reports on the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces by children with ADHD. Methods We evaluated the neural correlates of familiar and unfamiliar facial recognition in children with ADHD compared to typically developing (TD) children. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure hemodynamic responses on the bilateral temporal regions while participants looked at photographs of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Nine boys with ADHD and 14 age-matched TD boys participated in the study. fNIRS data were Z-scored prior to analysis. Results During familiar face processing, TD children only showed significant activity in the late phase, while ADHD children showed significant activity in both the early and late phases. Additionally, the boys with ADHD did not show right hemispheric lateralization to familiar faces. Conclusions This study is the first to assess brain activity during familiar face processing in boys with ADHD using fNIRS. These findings of atypical patterns of brain activity in boys with ADHD may be related to social cognitive impairments from ADHD.


2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 639-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Caharel ◽  
Olivier d’Arripe ◽  
Meike Ramon ◽  
Corentin Jacques ◽  
Bruno Rossion

Author(s):  
Lise Van der Haegen ◽  
Qing Cai

It is intriguing that the two brain halves of the human brain look so similar, but are in fact quite different at the anatomical level, and even more so at the functional level. In particular, the highly frequent co-occurrence of right-handedness and left hemisphere dominance of language has led to an abundance of laterality research. This chapter discusses the most important recent finding on laterality (i.e., left or right hemisphere) and degree of hemispheric specialization for speech production, auditory speech processing, and reading. Following a descriptive overview of these three core sub-processes of language, the chapter summarizes possible influences on the lateralization of each, including anatomical, evolutionary, genetic, developmental, and experiential factors, as well as handedness and impairment. It will become clear that language is a heterogeneous cognitive function driven by a variety of underpinning origins. Next, the often-underestimated role of the right hemisphere for language is discussed with respect to prosody and metaphor comprehension, as well as individual differences in the lateralization of healthy and language-impaired brains. Finally, recent insights into the relationship between lateralized language and non-language functions are discussed, highlighting the unique contribution of lateralization research to the growing knowledge of general human brain mechanisms.


PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Prete ◽  
Daniele Marzoli ◽  
Luca Tommasi

Background.The ability to identify faces has been interpreted as a cerebral specialization based on the evolutionary importance of these social stimuli, and a number of studies have shown that this function is mainly lateralized in the right hemisphere. The aim of this study was to assess the right-hemispheric specialization in face recognition in unfamiliar circumstances.Methods.Using a divided visual field paradigm, we investigated hemispheric asymmetries in the matching of two subsequent faces, using two types of transformation hindering identity recognition, namely upside-down rotation and spatial “explosion” (female and male faces were fractured into parts so that their mutual spatial relations were left intact), as well as their combination.Results.We confirmed the right-hemispheric superiority in face processing. Moreover, we found a decrease of the identity recognition for more extreme “levels of explosion” and for faces presented upside-down (either as sample or target stimuli) than for faces presented upright, as well as an advantage in the matching of female compared to male faces.Discussion.We conclude that the right-hemispheric superiority for face processing is not an epiphenomenon of our expertise, because we are not often exposed to inverted and “exploded” faces, but rather a robust hemispheric lateralization. We speculate that these results could be attributable to the prevalence of right-handedness in humans and/or to early biases in social interactions.


2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 793-802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Rossion ◽  
Laurence Dricot ◽  
Anne Devolder ◽  
Jean-Michel Bodart ◽  
Marc Crommelinck ◽  
...  

Behavioral studies indicate a right hemisphere advantage for processing a face as a whole and a left hemisphere superiority for processing based on face features. The present PET study identifies the anatomical localization of these effects in well-defined regions of the middle fusiform gyri of both hemispheres. The right middle fusiform gyrus, previously described as a face-specific region, was found to be more activated when matching whole faces than face parts whereas this pattern of activity was reversed in the left homologous region. These lateralized differences appeared to be specific to faces since control objects processed either as wholes or parts did not induce any change of activity within these regions. This double dissociation between two modes of face processing brings new evidence regarding the lateralized localization of face individualization mechanisms in the human brain.


2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 1329-1329
Author(s):  
Richard Le Grand ◽  
Catherine J Mondloch ◽  
Daphne Maurer ◽  
Henry P Brent

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