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      Face pareidolia in the brain: Impact of gender and orientation

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          Abstract

          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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          Looking at upside-down faces.

          Robert K. Yin (1969)
          Article 0 comments Cited 433 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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            The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces.

            Nancy Kanwisher, Galit Yovel (2006)
            Faces are among the most important visual stimuli we perceive, informing us not only about a person's identity, but also about their mood, sex, age and direction of gaze. The ability to extract this information within a fraction of a second of viewing a face is important for normal social interactions and has probably played a critical role in the survival of our primate ancestors. Considerable evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neurophysiological investigations supports the hypothesis that humans have specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of faces (the face-specificity hypothesis). Here, we review the literature on a region of the human brain that appears to play a key role in face perception, known as the fusiform face area (FFA). Section 1 outlines the theoretical background for much of this work. The face-specificity hypothesis falls squarely on one side of a longstanding debate in the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience concerning the extent to which the mind/brain is composed of: (i) special-purpose ('domain-specific') mechanisms, each dedicated to processing a specific kind of information (e.g. faces, according to the face-specificity hypothesis), versus (ii) general-purpose ('domain-general') mechanisms, each capable of operating on any kind of information. Face perception has long served both as one of the prime candidates of a domain-specific process and as a key target for attack by proponents of domain-general theories of brain and mind. Section 2 briefly reviews the prior literature on face perception from behaviour and neurophysiology. This work supports the face-specificity hypothesis and argues against its domain-general alternatives (the individuation hypothesis, the expertise hypothesis and others). Section 3 outlines the more recent evidence on this debate from brain imaging, focusing particularly on the FFA. We review the evidence that the FFA is selectively engaged in face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis. In section 4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces. We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (e.g. the face-inversion effect). Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects. The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity. We end by speculating in section 6 on some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the question of whether faces are unique versus whether similarly specialized mechanisms also exist for other domains of high-level perception and cognition.
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              Mechanisms of face perception.

              D Tsao, S. Livingstone, Thomas C.-Y. Tsao (2007)
              Faces are among the most informative stimuli we ever perceive: Even a split-second glimpse of a person's face tells us his identity, sex, mood, age, race, and direction of attention. The specialness of face processing is acknowledged in the artificial vision community, where contests for face-recognition algorithms abound. Neurological evidence strongly implicates a dedicated machinery for face processing in the human brain to explain the double dissociability of face- and object-recognition deficits. Furthermore, recent evidence shows that macaques too have specialized neural machinery for processing faces. Here we propose a unifying hypothesis, deduced from computational, neurological, fMRI, and single-unit experiments: that what makes face processing special is that it is gated by an obligatory detection process. We clarify this idea in concrete algorithmic terms and show how it can explain a variety of phenomena associated with face processing.
              Article 0 comments Cited 178 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Marina A. Pavlova:
                ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8239-3589
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SupervisionRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Valentina Romagnano: Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: Writing – original draft
                Andreas J. Fallgatter: Role: ResourcesRole: Writing – review & editing
                Alexander N. Sokolov: Role: Formal analysisRole: Writing – review & editing
                Marco Tamietto: Role: Editor
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS One
                Journal ID (publisher-id): plos
                Journal ID (pmc): plosone
                Title: PLoS ONE
                Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203
                Publication date (Electronic): 31 December 2020
                Publication date Collection: 2020
                Volume: 15
                Issue: 12
                Electronic Location Identifier: e0244516
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School and University Hospital, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
                [2 ] LEAD Graduate School & Research Network, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
                [3 ] German Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders (DZNE), Medical School and University Hospital, Tübingen, Germany
                Tilburg University, NETHERLANDS
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8239-3589
                Article
                Publisher ID: PONE-D-20-31676
                DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244516
                PMC ID: 7774913
                PubMed ID: 33382767
                SO-VID: b7a7fced-27c2-4834-b471-57372578a07b
                Copyright © © 2020 Pavlova et al
                License:

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                Date received : 8 October 2020
                Date accepted : 10 December 2020
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 0, Pages: 13
                Funding
                Funded by: DFG
                Award ID: Pa847/25-1
                Award Recipient :
                ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8239-3589
                German Research Council (DFG; Research Grant PA847/25-1) and the Reinhold Beitlich Foundation to MAP. Valentina Romagnano’s work in this project was within the Program Erasmus+/KA1 Traineeship funded by the European Union, MIUR, and University of Trento, Italy. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors acknowledge support toward open access publishing by the Open Access Publishing Fund of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.
                Categories
                Subject: Research Article
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Cognitive Science
                Subject: Cognition
                Subject: Memory
                Subject: Face Recognition
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Learning and Memory
                Subject: Memory
                Subject: Face Recognition
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Cognitive Science
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Perception
                Subject: Face Recognition
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Perception
                Subject: Face Recognition
                Subject: Social Sciences
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Perception
                Subject: Face Recognition
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Anatomy
                Subject: Head
                Subject: Face
                Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
                Subject: Anatomy
                Subject: Head
                Subject: Face
                Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
                Subject: Clinical Medicine
                Subject: Signs and Symptoms
                Subject: Medical Facies
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Cognitive Science
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Perception
                Subject: Sensory Perception
                Subject: Vision
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Perception
                Subject: Sensory Perception
                Subject: Vision
                Subject: Social Sciences
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Perception
                Subject: Sensory Perception
                Subject: Vision
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Sensory Perception
                Subject: Vision
                Subject: Computer and Information Sciences
                Subject: Data Management
                Subject: Data Processing
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Anatomy
                Subject: Head
                Subject: Eyes
                Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
                Subject: Anatomy
                Subject: Head
                Subject: Eyes
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Anatomy
                Subject: Ocular System
                Subject: Eyes
                Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
                Subject: Anatomy
                Subject: Ocular System
                Subject: Eyes
                Subject: Research and Analysis Methods
                Subject: Imaging Techniques
                Subject: Neuroimaging
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Neuroimaging
                Subject: Research and Analysis Methods
                Subject: Bioassays and Physiological Analysis
                Subject: Electrophysiological Techniques
                Subject: Brain Electrophysiology
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Physiology
                Subject: Electrophysiology
                Subject: Neurophysiology
                Subject: Brain Electrophysiology
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Neurophysiology
                Subject: Brain Electrophysiology
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Brain Mapping
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
                Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
                Subject: Clinical Medicine
                Subject: Clinical Neurophysiology
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
                Subject: Research and Analysis Methods
                Subject: Imaging Techniques
                Subject: Neuroimaging
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
                Subject: Biology and Life Sciences
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Neuroimaging
                Subject: Electroencephalography
                Subject: Event-Related Potentials
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