Face pareidolia in the brain: Impact of gender and orientation

Research on face sensitivity is of particular relevance during the rapidly evolving Covid-19 pandemic leading to social isolation, but also calling for intact interaction and sharing. Humans possess high sensitivity even to a coarse face scheme, seeing faces in non-face images where real faces do not exist. The advantage of non-face images is that single components do not trigger face processing. Here by implementing a novel set of Face-n-Thing images, we examined (i) how face tuning alters with changing display orientation, and (ii) whether it is affected by observers’ gender. Young females and males were presented with a set of Face-n-Thing images either with canonical upright orientation or inverted 180° in the image plane. Face impression was substantially impeded by display inversion. Furthermore, whereas with upright display orientation, no gender differences were found, with inversion, Face-n-Thing images elicited face impression in females significantly more often. The outcome sheds light on the origins of the face inversion effect in general. Moreover, the findings open a way for examination of face sensitivity and underwriting brain networks in neuropsychiatric conditions related to the current pandemic (such as depression and anxiety), most of which are gender/sex-specific.

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Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000018 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 161-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jisien Yang ◽

Adrian Schwaninger

Keyword(s):

Face Recognition ◽

Face Processing ◽

Underlying Mechanism ◽

Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Processing ◽

Major Contributor ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Information ◽

Face Inversion ◽

The Face

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.

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Fuzzy-Face

Journal of Biological System ◽

10.1142/s0218339098000194 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 06 (03) ◽

pp. 281-298 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Terry Huntsberger ◽

John Rose ◽

Shashidhar Ramaka

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Gender Discrimination ◽

Computational Models ◽

Experimental Studies ◽

Processing System ◽

Facial Hair ◽

Lighting Conditions ◽

Face Images ◽

The Face ◽

Strong Motivation

The human face is one of the most important patterns our visual system receives. It establishes a person's identity and also plays a significant role in everyday communication. Humans can recognize familiar faces under varying lighting conditions, different scales, and even after the face has changed due to aging, hair style, glasses, or facial hair. Our ease at recognizing faces is a strong motivation for the investigation of computational models of face processing. This paper presents a newly developed face processing system called Fuzzy-Face that combines wavelet pre-processing of input with a fuzzy self-organizing feature map algorithm. The wavelet-derived face space is partitioned into fuzzy sets which are characterized by face exemplars and membership values to those exemplars. This system learns faces using relatively few training epochs, has total recall for faces it has been shown, generalizes to face images that are acquired under different lighting conditions, and has rudimentary gender discrimination capabilities. We also include the results of some experimental studies.

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Differential Activation to Faces, Degraded Faces, and Their Inverted Counterparts

Perception ◽

10.1068/v970351 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽

pp. 240-240

Author(s):

K Linkenkaer-Hansen ◽

M Sams ◽

J K Hietanen ◽

R J Ilmoniemi

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Signal Strength ◽

Signal Amplitude ◽

Evoked Responses ◽

Peak Activity ◽

Onset Latency ◽

Face Images ◽

The Face ◽

Eeg Recordings ◽

Increased Activity

We investigated electrophysiological correlates of activation to faces, pointillised faces (degraded to a degree still allowing face perception), and their inverted counterparts. Evoked magnetic fields to the four stimulus categories were recorded by 122-channel magnetoencephalography (MEG) in six subjects. Simultaneously recorded 64-channel EEG provided visual evoked potentials in four subjects. Analysis of the onset, peak latencies, and the signal strength of the face enhanced N170 response indicated the following. (1) In general, the MEG and EEG recordings supported each other. (2) Degrading the images delayed both the onset and peak latencies. Degrading the upright faces increased activity in some subjects, but activity to the degraded inverted faces was lower in all subjects. (3) Inversion delayed the onset latency of both the original and degraded faces by 4 – 10 ms on average. A similar shift was found for the peak latency of the inverted original face images. However, their pointillised counterparts peaked on average 26 ms later when inverted. The signal amplitude also reflected a differential effect of inverting original vs degraded faces; whereas original faces evoked larger responses in all six subjects, the signal to inverted degraded faces decreased in four subjects. The findings suggest that the analysis of both the onset (100 – 120 ms) and peak activity (150 – 170 ms) is important for understanding face processing. The effect of inversion on the evoked responses was found to be different for the original and pointillised faces.

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Sensitivity to Faces with Typical and Atypical Part Configurations within Regions of the Face-processing Network: An fMRI Study

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01255 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 30 (7) ◽

pp. 963-972 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Andrew D. Engell ◽

Na Yeon Kim ◽

Gregory McCarthy

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Domain Specific ◽

Face Area ◽

Fmri Study ◽

The Face ◽

Occipital Face Area ◽

Typical Configuration ◽

The Brain ◽

Processing Network

Perception of faces has been shown to engage a domain-specific set of brain regions, including the occipital face area (OFA) and the fusiform face area (FFA). It is commonly held that the OFA is responsible for the detection of faces in the environment, whereas the FFA is responsible for processing the identity of the face. However, an alternative model posits that the FFA is responsible for face detection and subsequently recruits the OFA to analyze the face parts in the service of identification. An essential prediction of the former model is that the OFA is not sensitive to the arrangement of internal face parts. In the current fMRI study, we test the sensitivity of the OFA and FFA to the configuration of face parts. Participants were shown faces in which the internal parts were presented in a typical configuration (two eyes above a nose above a mouth) or in an atypical configuration (the locations of individual parts were shuffled within the face outline). Perception of the atypical faces evoked a significantly larger response than typical faces in the OFA and in a wide swath of the surrounding posterior occipitotemporal cortices. Surprisingly, typical faces did not evoke a significantly larger response than atypical faces anywhere in the brain, including the FFA (although some subthreshold differences were observed). We propose that face processing in the FFA results in inhibitory sculpting of activation in the OFA, which accounts for this region's weaker response to typical than to atypical configurations.

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The Face-Inversion Effect as a Deficit in the Encoding of Configural Information: Direct Evidence

Perception ◽

10.1068/p3012 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 159-170 ◽

Cited By ~ 345

Author(s):

Alejo Freire ◽

Kang Lee ◽

Lawrence A Symons

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Direct Evidence ◽

Inversion Effect ◽

Matching To Sample ◽

Delayed Matching ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Information ◽

Face Inversion ◽

The Face ◽

Repeated Experiment

We report four experiments leading to conclusions that: (i) the face-inversion effect is mainly due to the deficits in processing of configural information from inverted faces; and (ii) this effect occurs primarily at the encoding stage of face processing, rather than at the storage stage. In experiment 1, participants discriminated upright faces differing primarily in configuration with 81% accuracy. Participants viewing the same faces presented upside down scored only 55%. In experiment 2, the corresponding discrimination rates for faces differing mainly in featural information were 91% (upright) and 90% (inverted). In experiments 3 and 4, the same faces were used in a memory paradigm. In experiment 3, a delayed matching-to-sample task was used, in which upright-face pairs differed either in configuration or features. Recognition rates were comparable to those for the corresponding upright faces in the discrimination tasks in experiments 1 and 2. However, there was no effect of delay (1 s, 5 s, or 10 s). In experiment 4, we repeated experiment 3, this time with inverted faces. Results were comparable to those of inverted conditions in experiments 1 and 2, and again there was no effect of delay. Together these results suggest that an ‘encoding bottleneck’ for configural information may be responsible for the face-inversion effect in particular, and memory for faces in general.

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Configural Face Processing: A Meta-Analytic Survey

Perception ◽

10.1068/p6928 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 40 (12) ◽

pp. 1478-1490 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Raymond Bruyer

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Superiority Effect ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Counting Approach ◽

The Face ◽

Meta Analyses ◽

Negative Face ◽

Composite Face ◽

Vote Counting

In the field of face processing, the configural hypothesis is defended by many researchers. It is often claimed that this thesis is robustly supported by a large number of experiments exploring the face-inversion effect, the composite face effect, the face superiority effect, and the negative face effect. However, this claim is generally based on a rudimentary and approximate vote-counting approach. In this paper, I use meta-analyses to examine the relevant literature in more depth. The analysis supports the vote-counting argument.

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Turning the Face Inversion Effect on its Head: Violated Expectations of Orientation, Lighting and Gravity Enhance N170 Amplitudes.

10.31234/osf.io/evwkm ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Yasmin Allen-Davidian ◽

Manuela Russo ◽

Naohide Yamamoto ◽

Jordy Kaufman ◽

Alan J. Pegna ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potential ◽

N170 Amplitude ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Face Inversion ◽

Electrophysiological Responses ◽

The Face ◽

Face Stimuli ◽

Violated Expectations ◽

Processing Mechanisms ◽

The Brain

Face Inversion Effects (FIEs) – differences in response to upside down faces compared to upright faces – occur for both behavioural and electrophysiological responses when people view face stimuli. In EEG, the inversion of a face is often reported to evoke an enhanced amplitude and delayed latency of the N170 event-related potential. This response has historically been attributed to the indexing of specialised face processing mechanisms within the brain. However, inspection of the literature revealed that while the N170 is consistently delayed to photographed, schematic, Mooney and line drawn face stimuli, only naturally photographed faces enhance the amplitude upon inversion. This raises the possibility that the increased N170 amplitudes to inverted faces may have other origins than the inversion of the face’s structural components. In line with previous research establishing the N170 as a prediction error signal, we hypothesise that the unique N170 amplitude response to inverted photographed faces stems from multiple expectation violations, over and above structural inversion. For instance, rotating an image of a face upside down not only violates the expectation that faces appear upright, but also lifelong priors that illumination comes from above and gravity pulls from below. To test this hypothesis, we recorded EEG whilst participants viewed face stimuli (upright versus inverted), where the faces were illuminated from above versus below, and where the models were photographed upright versus hanging upside down. The N170 amplitudes were found to be modulated by a complex interaction between orientation, lighting and gravity factors, with the amplitudes largest when faces consistently violated all three expectations and smallest when all these factors concurred with expectations. These results confirm our hypothesis that FIEs on N170 amplitudes are driven by a violation of the viewer’s expectations across several parameters that characterise faces, rather than a disruption in the configurational disposition of its features.

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Time to Face Language: Embodied Mechanisms Underpin the Inception of Face-Related Meanings in the Human Brain

Cerebral Cortex ◽

10.1093/cercor/bhaa178 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (11) ◽

pp. 6051-6068 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Adolfo M García ◽

Eugenia Hesse ◽

Agustina Birba ◽

Federico Adolfi ◽

Ezequiel Mikulan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Network Activity ◽

Body Parts ◽

Conceptual Systems ◽

Intracranial Eeg ◽

N170 Amplitude ◽

Semantic Categories ◽

The Face ◽

The Brain ◽

Processing Network

Abstract In construing meaning, the brain recruits multimodal (conceptual) systems and embodied (modality-specific) mechanisms. Yet, no consensus exists on how crucial the latter are for the inception of semantic distinctions. To address this issue, we combined electroencephalographic (EEG) and intracranial EEG (iEEG) to examine when nouns denoting facial body parts (FBPs) and nonFBPs are discriminated in face-processing and multimodal networks. First, FBP words increased N170 amplitude (a hallmark of early facial processing). Second, they triggered fast (~100 ms) activity boosts within the face-processing network, alongside later (~275 ms) effects in multimodal circuits. Third, iEEG recordings from face-processing hubs allowed decoding ~80% of items before 200 ms, while classification based on multimodal-network activity only surpassed ~70% after 250 ms. Finally, EEG and iEEG connectivity between both networks proved greater in early (0–200 ms) than later (200–400 ms) windows. Collectively, our findings indicate that, at least for some lexico-semantic categories, meaning is construed through fast reenactments of modality-specific experience.

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Turning the Face Inversion Effect on Its Head: Violated Expectations of Orientation, Lighting, and Gravity Enhance N170 Amplitudes

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01656 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 303-314

Author(s):

Yasmin Allen-Davidian ◽

Manuela Russo ◽

Naohide Yamamoto ◽

Jordy Kaufman ◽

Alan J. Pegna ◽

...

Keyword(s):

N170 Amplitude ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Face Inversion ◽

Electrophysiological Responses ◽

The Face ◽

Face Stimuli ◽

Violated Expectations ◽

Processing Mechanisms ◽

The Brain ◽

Inversion Effects

Face inversion effects occur for both behavioral and electrophysiological responses when people view faces. In EEG, inverted faces are often reported to evoke an enhanced amplitude and delayed latency of the N170 ERP. This response has been attributed to the indexing of specialized face processing mechanisms within the brain. However, inspection of the literature revealed that, although N170 is consistently delayed to a variety of face representations, only photographed faces invoke enhanced N170 amplitudes upon inversion. This suggests that the increased N170 amplitudes to inverted faces may have other origins than the inversion of the face's structure. We hypothesize that the unique N170 amplitude response to inverted photographed faces stems from multiple expectation violations, over and above structural inversion. For instance, rotating an image of a face upside–down not only violates the expectation that faces appear upright but also lifelong priors about illumination and gravity. We recorded EEG while participants viewed face stimuli (upright vs. inverted), where the faces were illuminated from above versus below, and where the models were photographed upright versus hanging upside–down. The N170 amplitudes were found to be modulated by a complex interaction between orientation, lighting, and gravity factors, with the amplitudes largest when faces consistently violated all three expectations. These results confirm our hypothesis that face inversion effects on N170 amplitudes are driven by a violation of the viewer's expectations across several parameters that characterize faces, rather than a disruption in the configurational disposition of its features.

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Developmental changes in the processing of faces as revealed by EEG decoding

10.1101/557447 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Inês Mares ◽

Louise Ewing ◽

Emily K. Farran ◽

Fraser W Smith ◽

Marie L Smith

Keyword(s):

Face Processing ◽

Inversion Effect ◽

Broad Face ◽

Individual Level ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Face Inversion ◽

Face Categorization ◽

Age Related ◽

The Face ◽

Processing Mechanisms

AbstractRapidly and accurately processing information from faces is a critical human function that is known to improve with developmental age. Understanding the underlying drivers of this improvement remains a contentious question, with debate continuing as to the presence of early vs. late maturation of face-processing mechanisms. Recent behavioural evidence suggests an important ‘hallmark’ of expert face processing – the face inversion effect – is present in very young children, yet neural support for this remains unclear. To address this, we conducted a detailed investigation of the neural dynamics of face-selective processing in children spanning a range of ages (6 – 11 years) and adults. Uniquely, we applied multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the electroencephalogram signal (EEG) to test for the presence of a distinct neural profile associated with canonical upright faces when compared both to other objects (houses) and to inverted faces. Results revealed robust discrimination profiles, at the individual level, of differentiated neural activity associated with broad face categorization and further with its expert processing, as indexed by the face inversion effect, from the youngest ages tested. This result is consistent with an early functional maturation of broad face processing mechanisms. Yet, clear quantitative differences between the response profile of children and adults is suggestive of age-related refinement of this system with developing face and general expertise. Standard ERP analysis also provides some support for qualitative differences in the neural response to inverted faces in children in contrast to adults. This neural profile is in line with recent behavioural studies that have reported impressively expert early face abilities during childhood, while also providing novel evidence of the ongoing neural specialisation between child and adulthood.

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