An event-related brain potential study of explicit face recognition

To determine the time course of face recognition and its links to face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP) components, ERPs elicited by faces of famous individuals and ERPs to non-famous control faces were compared in a task that required explicit judgements of facial identity. As expected, the face-selective N170 component was unaffected by the difference between famous and non-famous faces. In contrast, the occipito-temporal N250 component was linked to face recognition, as it was selectively triggered by famous faces. Importantly, this component was present for famous faces that were judged to be definitely known relative to famous faces that just appeared familiar, demonstrating that it is associated with the explicit identification of a particular face. The N250 is likely to reflect early perceptual stages of face recognition where long-term memory traces of familiar faces in ventral visual cortex are activated by matching on-line face representations. Famous faces also triggered a broadly distributed longer-latency positivity (P600f) that showed a left-hemisphere bias and was larger for definitely known faces, suggesting links between this component and name generation. These results show that successful face recognition is predicted by ERP components over face-specific visual areas that emerge within 230 ms after stimulus onset.     

A new selective developmental deficit: Impaired object recognition with normal face recognition

Introduction

Studies of developmental deficits in face recognition, or developmental prosopagnosia, have shown that individuals who have not suffered brain damage can show face recognition impairments coupled with normal object recognition ( [Duchaine and Nakayama, 2005] , [Duchaine et?al., 2006] and [Nunn et?al., 2001] ). However, no developmental cases with the opposite dissociation – normal face recognition with impaired object recognition – have been reported. The existence of a case of non-face developmental visual agnosia would indicate that the development of normal face recognition mechanisms does not rely on the development of normal object recognition mechanisms.

Methods

To see whether a developmental variant of non-face visual object agnosia exists, we conducted a series of web-based object and face recognition tests to screen for individuals showing object recognition memory impairments but not face recognition impairments. Through this screening process, we identified AW, an otherwise normal 19-year-old female, who was then tested in the lab on face and object recognition tests.

Results

AW’s performance was impaired in within-class visual recognition memory across six different visual categories (guns, horses, scenes, tools, doors, and cars). In contrast, she scored normally on seven tests of face recognition, tests of memory for two other object categories (houses and glasses), and tests of recall memory for visual shapes. Testing confirmed that her impairment was not related to a general deficit in lower-level perception, object perception, basic-level recognition, or memory.

Discussion

AW’s results provide the first neuropsychological evidence that recognition memory for non-face visual object categories can be selectively impaired in individuals without brain damage or other memory impairment. These results indicate that the development of recognition memory for faces does not depend on intact object recognition memory and provide further evidence for category-specific dissociations in visual recognition.     

The role of face shape and pigmentation in other-race face perception: An electrophysiological study

Adult observers generally find it difficult to recognize and distinguish faces that belong to categories with which they have limited visual experience. One aspect of this phenomenon is commonly known as the “Other-Race Effect” (ORE) since this behavior is typically highly evident in the perception of faces belonging to ethnic or racial groups other than that of the observer. This acquired disadvantage in face recognition likely results from highly specific “tuning” of the underlying representation of facial appearance, leading to efficient processing of commonly seen faces at the expense of poor generalization to other face categories. In the current study we used electrophysiological (event-related potentials or ERPs) and behavioral measures of performance to characterize face processing in racial categories defined by dissociable shape and pigmentation information. Our goal was to examine the specificity of the representation of facial appearance in more detail by investigating how race-specific face shape and pigmentation separately modulated neural responses previously implicated in face processing, the N170 and N250 components. We found that both components were modulated by skin color, independent of face shape, but that only the N250 exhibited sensitivity to face shape. Moreover, the N250 appears to only respond differentially to the skin color of upright faces, showing a lack of color sensitivity for inverted faces.     

The fusiform face area is not sufficient for face recognition: evidence from a patient with dense prosopagnosia and no occipital face area

We tested functional activation for faces in patient D.F., who following acquired brain damage has a profound deficit in object recognition based on form (visual form agnosia) and also prosopagnosia that is undocumented to date. Functional imaging demonstrated that like our control observers, D.F. shows significantly more activation when passively viewing face compared to scene images in an area that is consistent with the fusiform face area (FFA) (p < 0.01). Control observers also show occipital face area (OFA) activation; however, whereas D.F.'s lesions appear to overlap the OFA bilaterally. We asked, given that D.F. shows FFA activation for faces, to what extent is she able to recognize faces? D.F. demonstrated a severe impairment in higher level face processing--she could not recognize face identity, gender or emotional expression. In contrast, she performed relatively normally on many face categorization tasks. D.F. can differentiate faces from non-faces given sufficient texture information and processing time, and she can do this is independent of color and illumination information. D.F. can use configural information for categorizing faces when they are presented in an upright but not a sideways orientation and given that she also cannot discriminate half-faces she may rely on a spatially symmetric feature arrangement. Faces appear to be a unique category, which she can classify even when she has no advance knowledge that she will be shown face images. Together, these imaging and behavioral data support the importance of the integrity of a complex network of regions for face identification, including more than just the FFA--in particular the OFA, a region believed to be associated with low-level processing.     

EEG correlates of face recognition in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders: A systematic review

ObjectiveTo systematically assess EEG studies and evaluate neuropsychological changes of face recognition in the context of neutral face stimuli in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.MethodsA literature search was conducted using the PubMed database from inception to March 2018. Studies included in the review measured any event-related potentials, neural oscillations, or phase synchrony.ResultsA total of 113 articles were identified. Twenty-nine studies were included for the review. The majority of the studies focused on the N170 component. Smaller N170 amplitudes were consistently reported in schizophrenia patients compared to the healthy control group. Significant correlations between N170 amplitudes and social functioning scales were reported. Other results were quite inconsistent; however, group differences were more prominent for tasks with specific conditions.ConclusionsOlder patients with longer disease duration show more consistent neuropsychological correlations. Alterations of event-related potentials are likely to be linked to higher severity of symptoms. The N170 component seems to be the most promising event-related potential to be used for evaluation of present status and for dynamic control of cognitive impairments, social functioning, and rehabilitation effectiveness.SignificanceThis systematic review provides evidence of (1) neuropsychological alterations of face processing outside an emotional context, and (2) a potential role of N170 as a diagnostic and treatment monitoring biomarker.     

Human brain potential correlates of repetition priming in face and name recognition

We investigated repetition priming in the recognition of famous people by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs). Participants performed speeded two-choice responses depending on whether or not a stimulus showed a famous person. In Experiment 1, a facilitation was found in RTs to famous (but not to unfamiliar) faces when primed by the same face shown in an earlier priming phase of the experiment. In ERPs, an influence of repetition priming was observed neither for the N170 nor for a temporal N250 component which in previous studies had been shown to be sensitive to immediate face repetitions. ERPs to primed unfamiliar faces were more negative over right occipitotemporal areas than those to unprimed faces, but this effect was specific for repetitions of the same image, consistent with recent findings. In contrast, ERPs to primed familiar faces were more positive than those to unprimed faces at parietal sites from 500-600 ms after face onset, and these priming effects were comparable regardless of whether the same or a different image of the celebrity had served as prime. In Experiment 2, similar results were found for name recognition-a facilitation in RTs to primed familiar but not unfamiliar names, and a parietal positivity to primed names around 500-600 ms. ERP repetition effects showed comparable topographies for faces and names, consistent with the idea of a common underlying source. With reference to current models of face recognition, we suggest that these ERP repetition effects for familiar stimuli reflect a change in post-perceptual representations for people, rather than a neural correlate of recognition at a perceptual level.     

The classification of 'fear' from faces is associated with face recognition skill in women.

Two experiments were conducted to explore the relationship between the discrimination of the facial expression of 'fear' in faces and facial recognition. On the basis of the reported role of the amygdala in both processes in patients, we hypothesised that the two skills would be correlated in normal adults. In Experiment 1, a series of tests of facial expression categorisation, of face matching and of familiar and unfamiliar face recognition was conducted on normal young women, for whom psychometric scores were also obtained (n=23). Accuracy of categorisation of fear from faces predicted variance in face recognition accuracy-especially in tasks of unfamiliar face recognition (immediate old-new discrimination). No other correlations between face processing and expression classification were significant. Experiment 2 repeated the expression classification tests and an unfamiliar face recognition test on a new sample of men (n=13) and women (n=16). While there were no sex differences in face recognition, the correlation between 'fear' and face recognition was replicated only for women. These data indicate that the amygdala supports both the specific apprehension of fear in faces and face recognition in adult human females, but that the association may not hold for men. Sex differences in the structure of the amygdala-hippocampal complex suggest a likely cortical substrate for the observed differences. We speculate that social learning, which involves identifying the faces of potentially salient others, and also their attitude to the observer, engages the amygdala more readily in women than in men.     

A test movie to study elementary abilities in perception and recognition of mimic and gestural expression

Summary A test movie consisting of 13 different silent movie scenes, each 10s in duration, was developed to test in patients the elementary abilities, perception and recognition of mimic and gestural expression. Each scene was subjected to 10 (2×5) verbal or non-verbal multiple-choice tests. Quantitative analysis of normal control group results is described. All sub-tests were very easy for normals and resulted in error scores below 5%. Thus the test is not designed to differentiate within a group of normal subjects but to characterize a pathological reduction in mimic, gesture and person recognition in schizophrenic and brain-lesioned patients.By measuring the dependency of correct recognition of the different movie scenes on the inspection duration, it was shown that the projection time of 10s applied in the full test led to a fairly high amount of informational redundancy. This was intentional so that stimulus material could be well perceived and recognized even by patients with somewhat fluctuating attentiveness.     

Face recognition in schizophrenia disorder: A comprehensive review of behavioral,neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies

Facial emotion processing has been extensively studied in schizophrenia patients while general face processing has received less attention. The already published reviews do not address the current scientific literature in a complete manner. Therefore, here we tried to answer some questions that remain to be clarified, particularly: are the non-emotional aspects of facial processing in fact impaired in schizophrenia patients? At the behavioral level, our key conclusions are that visual perception deficit in schizophrenia patients: are not specific to faces; are most often present when the cognitive (e.g. attention) and perceptual demands of the tasks are important; and seems to worsen with the illness chronification. Although, currently evidence suggests impaired second order configural processing, more studies are necessary to determine whether or not holistic processing is impaired in schizophrenia patients. Neural and neurophysiological evidence suggests impaired earlier levels of visual processing, which might involve the deficits in interaction of the magnocellular and parvocellular pathways impacting on further processing. These deficits seem to be present even before the disorder out-set. Although evidence suggests that this deficit may be not specific to faces, further evidence on this question is necessary, in particularly more ecological studies including context and body processing.     

Autistic traits are linked to reduced adaptive coding of face identity and selectively poorer face recognition in men but not women

Our ability to discriminate and recognize thousands of faces despite their similarity as visual patterns relies on adaptive, norm-based, coding mechanisms that are continuously updated by experience. Reduced adaptive coding of face identity has been proposed as a neurocognitive endophenotype for autism, because it is found in autism and in relatives of individuals with autism. Autistic traits can also extend continuously into the general population, raising the possibility that reduced adaptive coding of face identity may be more generally associated with autistic traits. In the present study, we investigated whether adaptive coding of face identity decreases as autistic traits increase in an undergraduate population. Adaptive coding was measured using face identity aftereffects, and autistic traits were measured using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and its subscales. We also measured face and car recognition ability to determine whether autistic traits are selectively related to face recognition difficulties. We found that men who scored higher on levels of autistic traits related to social interaction had reduced adaptive coding of face identity. This result is consistent with the idea that atypical adaptive face-coding mechanisms are an endophenotype for autism. Autistic traits were also linked with face-selective recognition difficulties in men. However, there were some unexpected sex differences. In women, autistic traits were linked positively, rather than negatively, with adaptive coding of identity, and were unrelated to face-selective recognition difficulties. These sex differences indicate that autistic traits can have different neurocognitive correlates in men and women and raise the intriguing possibility that endophenotypes of autism can differ in males and females.     

The other face of the other-race effect: an fMRI investigation of the other-race face categorization advantage

The present study was the first to use the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methodology to investigate the neural correlates of race categorization of own- and other-race faces. We found that Chinese participants categorized the race of Caucasian faces more accurately and faster than that of Chinese faces, replicating the robust effect of the other-race categorization advantage. Regions of interest (ROI) analyses revealed greater neural activations when participants were categorizing own-race faces than other-race faces in the bilateral ventral occipito-temporal cortex (VOT) such as the fusiform face areas (FFAs) and the occipital face areas (OFAs). Within the left FFA, there was also a significant negative correlation between the behavioral difference of own- and other-race face categorization accuracy and the activation difference between categorizing own- and other-race faces. Whole brain analyses showed that categorizing own-race faces induced greater activations in the right medial frontal cortex (MFC) and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) than categorizing other-race faces. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses revealed that the frontal cortical regions interacted more strongly with the posterior VOT during the categorization of own-race faces than that of other-race faces. Overall, our findings suggest that relative to the categorization of other-race faces, more cortical resources are engaged during the categorization of own-race faces with which we have a higher level of processing expertise. This increased involvement of cortical neural sources perhaps serves to provide more in-depth processing of own-race faces (such as individuation), which in turn paradoxically results in the behavioral other-race categorization advantage.     

The Cambridge Face Memory Test: results for neurologically intact individuals and an investigation of its validity using inverted face stimuli and prosopagnosic participants

The two standardized tests of face recognition that are widely used suffer from serious shortcomings [Duchaine, B. & Weidenfeld, A. (2003). An evaluation of two commonly used tests of unfamiliar face recognition. Neuropsychologia, 41, 713-720; Duchaine, B. & Nakayama, K. (2004). Developmental prosopagnosia and the Benton Facial Recognition Test. Neurology, 62, 1219-1220]. Images in the Warrington Recognition Memory for Faces test include substantial non-facial information, and the simultaneous presentation of faces in the Benton Facial Recognition Test allows feature matching. Here, we present results from a new test, the Cambridge Face Memory Test, which builds on the strengths of the previous tests. In the test, participants are introduced to six target faces, and then they are tested with forced choice items consisting of three faces, one of which is a target. For each target face, three test items contain views identical to those studied in the introduction, five present novel views, and four present novel views with noise. There are a total of 72 items, and 50 controls averaged 58. To determine whether the test requires the special mechanisms used to recognize upright faces, we conducted two experiments. We predicted that controls would perform much more poorly when the face images are inverted, and as predicted, inverted performance was much worse with a mean of 42. Next we assessed whether eight prosopagnosics would perform poorly on the upright version. The prosopagnosic mean was 37, and six prosopagnosics scored outside the normal range. In contrast, the Warrington test and the Benton test failed to classify a majority of the prosopagnosics as impaired. These results indicate that the new test effectively assesses face recognition across a wide range of abilities.     

Visual scanning and recognition of ambiguous faces in children with autism: The effects of morphing levels and facial identities

Background and aimPrior work on face processing in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has mainly focused on the investigation of unfamiliar faces. The present study aimed to extend earlier research by the inclusion of the different faces with varying levels of perceptual difficulty.MethodsWe employed eye-tracking and morphing techniques to measure face recognition involving identification of face morphs and to record eye movements during the task. Three groups of children participated in the study, comprising 24 with ASD (aged from 4 to 7 years), 25 verbal IQ (VQ)-matched typical developing (TD) controls (aged from 3 to 4 years), and 25 chronological age (CA)-matched TD controls (aged from 4 to 6 years).ResultsThe group-difference was specific for morphed unknown faces – ASD children had a decreased judgement of unknown faces and showed a lower specificity. Concurrent eye-tracking further provided mechanistic insights: the ASD group exhibited a significant reduction in eye-region fixation when recognizing ambiguous unknown faces, relative to both TD groups.ConclusionThe current study provides evidence of a selective difficulty in the identification of unknown faces in ASD when the perceptual demand increased, without atypicality in self and familiar face processing. Reduced attention and social interest may be responsible for difficulties in response to stranger faces in young ASD children, rather than a consequence of inability.     

Comparative studies on recognition of faces,mimic and gestures in adolescent and middle-aged schizophrenic patients

Summary In adolescent and middle-aged schizophrenic patients and normals 10 different multiple-choice tests of 12 scored movie scenes lasting 10 s were applied, measuring the ability to recognize faces, persons and mimic expressions. In all tests errors were significantly higher by a factor of 7 to 14 in patients as compared to normals. The relative impairment of adolescent schizophrenic patients (as compared to adolescent normals) was somewhat stronger than that of adult schizophrenics. This supports the hypothesis that the impairment found in schizophrenic patients is caused by the disease and not by other factors such as duration of illness or hospitalization.     

Hippocampal underactivation in an fMRI study of word and face memory recognition in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a major mental disorder which is characterized by several cognitive deficits. Investigations of the neural basis of memory dysfunctions using neuroimaging techniques suggest that the hippocampus plays an important role in declarative memory impairment. The goal of this study was to investigate possible dysfunctions in cerebral activation in schizophrenic patients during both word and face recognition memory tasks. We tested 22 schizophrenics and 24 controls matched by gender, age, handedness and parental socioeconomic status. Compared to healthy volunteers, patients with schizophrenia showed decreased bilateral hippocampal activation during word and face recognition tasks. The whole brain analysis also showed a pattern of cortical and subcortical hypoactivation for both verbal and non-verbal recognition. This study provides further evidence of hippocampal involvement in declarative memory impairments of schizophrenia.     

Who is who: Italian norms for visual recognition and identification of celebrities

Abstract Age-, education- and sex-adjusted norms are provided for two new neuropsychological tests, namely (i) Face Recognition (guess of familiarity) and (ii) Person Identification (biographical contextualisation). Sixty-three pictures of celebrities and 63 of unknown people were selected following two interwoven criteria¹: the realm of their celebrity (i. e., entertainment, culture and politics) and the period of celebrity acquisition (i. e., pre-war, post-war and contemporary). Both media- and education-dependent knowledge of celebrity were considered. Ninety-eight unpaid healthy participants aged between 50 and 93 years and with at least 8 years of formal education took part in this study. Reference is made to serial models of familiar face/persons processing. Recognition is held to tackle the activity of Personal Identity Nodes (PINs) and identification of the Exemplar Semantics Archives. Given the seriality of the reference model, the Identification Test is embedded in the Recognition test. This entailed that only previously recognised faces were employed to achieve norms for identification. Note As the collaboration of each author was essential for the study, following our normal practice, names have been listed in alphabetical order. I.B. and H.S. proposed the study. F.F. and S.P. collected the data. C.S. carried out the statistical analyses. I.B. collaborated with H.S. in writing the text. ¹Authors can provide on request the CD-ROM with the face stimuli (Fig. 2 in this paper) and the blank protocols for running the two tests at issue. An erratum to this article can be found at .     

The role of lateral occipital face and object areas in the face inversion effect

Stimulus inversion impairs face discrimination to a greater extent than discrimination of other non-face object categories. This finding has led to suggestions that upright faces are represented by mechanisms specialized for upright faces whereas inverted face representation depends on more general object recognition mechanisms. In the present study we tested the causal role of face-selective and object-selective cortical areas for upright and inverted face discrimination by transiently disrupting neural processing using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Participants matched upright and inverted faces while TMS was delivered over each participant's functionally localized right occipital face area (rOFA) or right lateral occipital area (rLO). TMS delivered over rOFA disrupted the discrimination of upright and inverted faces while TMS delivered over rLO impaired inverted face discrimination only. These results provide causal evidence that upright faces are represented by face-specific mechanisms whereas inverted faces are represented by both face-specific and object-specific mechanisms. The similar sensitivity of the OFA to upright and inverted faces is consistent with the hypothesis that the OFA processes facial features at an early stage of face processing.     

A tale of two recognition systems: implications of the fusiform face area and the visual word form area for lateralized object recognition models

Two areas of current intense interest in the neuroimaging literature are that of the visual word form area (VWFA) and of the fusiform face area (FFA) and their roles in word and face perception, respectively. These two areas are of particular relevance to laterality research because visual word identification and face identification have long been shown to be especially lateralized to the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, respectively. This review therefore seeks to evaluate their significance for the broader understanding of lateralization of object recognition. A multi-level model of lateralized object recognition is proposed based on a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging findings. Rather than seek to characterize hemispheric asymmetries according to a single principle (e.g., serial-parallel), it is suggested that current observations can be understood in terms of three asymmetric levels of processing, using the framework of the Janus model of hemispheric function. It is suggested that the left hemisphere represents features using an abstract-category code whereas the RH utilizes a specific-exemplar code. The relationships between these features are also coded asymmetrically, with the LH relying on associative co-occurrence values and the RH relying on spatial metrics. Finally, the LH controlled selection system focuses on isolating features and the RH focuses on conjoining features. It is suggested that each hemisphere utilizes efficient (apparently parallel) processing when stimuli are congruent with its preferred processing style and inefficient (apparently serial) processing when they are not, resulting in the typical left-lateralization for orthographic analysis and right-lateralization for face analysis.