My face in yours: Visuo-tactile facial stimulation influences sense of identity

Abstract

Self-face recognition is crucial for sense of identity and self-awareness. Finding self-face recognition disorders mainly in neurological and psychiatric diseases suggests that modifying sense of identity in a simple, rapid way remains a “holy grail” for cognitive neuroscience. By touching the face of subjects who were viewing simultaneous touches on a partner's face, we induced a novel illusion of personal identity that we call “enfacement”: The partner's facial features became incorporated into the representation of the participant's own face. Subjects reported that morphed images of themselves and their partner contained more self than other only after synchronous, but not asynchronous, stroking. Therefore, we modified self-face recognition by means of a simple psychophysical manipulation. While accommodating gradual change in one's own face is an important form of representational plasticity that may help maintaining identity over time, the surprisingly rapid changes induced by our procedure suggest that sense of facial identity may be more malleable than previously believed. “Enfacement” correlated positively with the participant's empathic traits and with the physical attractiveness the participants attributed to their partners. Thus, personality variables modulate enfacement, which may represent a marker of the tendency to be social and may be absent in subjects with defective empathy.     

Are friends really the family we choose? Local variations of hypothalamus activity when viewing personally known faces

Sibling and friend relationships have significant impact on individuals' socio-emotional development. Hypothalamic supraoptic nucleus (SON) and paraventricular nucleus (PVN) synthesize and secrete neuropeptides, including oxytocin, associated with attachment behaviors. Here, using fMRI, we investigate the implication of these two hypothalamic nuclei in the visual processing of personally known faces. Faces of same-sex sibling, best friend, celebrity, and unknown person appear in the middle of the screen while participants perform a task requiring a button click each time a central white dot turns red. Ratings of familiarity (time spent together) and emotionality (feelings toward individual) toward the four individuals are recorded. Local activation within the hypothalamus is assessed via two complementary methods: (1) voxel-based analyses within inclusive mask of the hypothalamus; (2) region-of-interest (ROI) analysis of partial hypothalamic volumes using SON and PVN as center of mass coordinates, with percent signal change extracted and analyzed within these ROIs. Results suggest that the SON responds to all familiar individuals while the PVN has increased response to sibling compared to friend faces and is correlated to familiarity but not emotionality. These findings support differential involvement of local hypothalamic substructures SON and PVN in response to faces of individuals with different social relationships.     

仿真假体视觉下的人脸识别研究进展

目的：综述基于仿真假体视觉的人脸识别研究的主要进展。方法：回顾了近年来各研究小组基于仿真假体视觉的人脸识别研究进展,讨论假体视觉下人脸识别的可能性,分析了假体视觉下人脸识别的影响因素。结果：在仿真假体视觉下,分辨率和缺失率是影响人脸识别的主要因素,分辨率增加或是缺失率减小,对人脸的识别率有显著提高;其它光幻视参数中,一定程度内的灰度提高对假体下的人脸识别率有显著提高,而点大小、点间隙、对比度对其影响稍小,正方形的光幻视阵列排布的识别率高于六边形和极坐标排布。另外,图像处理策略如基于感兴趣区域的放大和对比度增强等,能帮助被试进行人脸识别。结论：由心理物理学方法得出,在假体视觉下,仍能完成基本的人脸识别任务;改变光幻视的参数或图像处理策略,会影响识别率。这些结果将帮助研究者们优化视觉假体中的信息处理和图像处理策略,并为术后康复训练提供了实验理论依据。     

Monkey visual behavior falls into the uncanny valley

Very realistic human-looking robots or computer avatars tend to elicit negative feelings in human observers. This phenomenon is known as the “uncanny valley” response. It is hypothesized that this uncanny feeling is because the realistic synthetic characters elicit the concept of “human,” but fail to live up to it. That is, this failure generates feelings of unease due to character traits falling outside the expected spectrum of everyday social experience. These unsettling emotions are thought to have an evolutionary origin, but tests of this hypothesis have not been forthcoming. To bridge this gap, we presented monkeys with unrealistic and realistic synthetic monkey faces, as well as real monkey faces, and measured whether they preferred looking at one type versus the others (using looking time as a measure of preference). To our surprise, monkey visual behavior fell into the uncanny valley: They looked longer at real faces and unrealistic synthetic faces than at realistic synthetic faces.     

Face recognition in schizophrenia: do individual and average ROCs tell the same story?

Introduction. Many studies have shown that recollection process is impaired in patients with schizophrenia, whereas familiarity is generally spared. However, in these studies, the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) presented is average ROC likely to mask individual differences.

Methods. In the present study using a face-recognition task, we computed the individual ROC of patients with schizophrenia and control participants. Each group was divided into two subgroups on the basis of the type of recognition processes implemented: recognition based on familiarity only and recognition based on familiarity and recollection.

Results. The recognition performance of the schizophrenia patients was below that of the control participants only when recognition was based solely on familiarity. For the familiarity-alone patients, the score obtained on the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) was correlated with the variance of the old-face familiarity. For the familiarity-recollection patients, the score obtained on the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) was correlated with the decision criterion and with the old-face recollection probability.

Conclusions. These results show that one cannot ascribe the impaired recognition observed in patients with schizophrenia to a recollection deficit alone. These results show that individual ROC can be used to distinguish between subtypes of schizophrenia and could serve as a basis for setting up specific cognitive remediation therapy for individuals with schizophrenia.     

Trends in Medicare Part D Medication Therapy Management Eligibility Criteria

Background

To increase the enrollment rate of medication therapy management (MTM) programs in Medicare Part D plans, the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) lowered the allowable eligibility thresholds based on the number of chronic diseases and Part D drugs for Medicare Part D plans for 2010 and after. However, an increase in MTM enrollment rates has not been realized.

Objectives

To describe trends in MTM eligibility thresholds used by Medicare Part D plans and to identify patterns that may hinder enrollment in MTM programs.

Methods

This study analyzed data extracted from the Medicare Part D MTM Programs Fact Sheets (2008–2014). The annual percentages of utilizing each threshold value of the number of chronic diseases and Part D drugs, as well as other aspects of MTM enrollment practices, were analyzed among Medicare MTM programs that were established by Medicare Part D plans.

Results

For 2010 and after, increased proportions of Medicare Part D plans set their eligibility thresholds at the maximum numbers allowable. For example, in 2008, 48.7% of Medicare Part D plans (N = 347:712) opened MTM enrollment to Medicare beneficiaries with only 2 chronic disease states (specific diseases varied between plans), whereas the other half restricted enrollment to patients with a minimum of 3 to 5 chronic disease states. After 2010, only approximately 20% of plans opened their MTM enrollment to patients with 2 chronic disease states, with the remaining 80% restricting enrollment to patients with 3 or more chronic diseases.

Conclusion

The policy change by CMS for 2010 and after is associated with increased proportions of plans setting their MTM eligibility thresholds at the maximum numbers allowable. Changes to the eligibility thresholds by Medicare Part D plans might have acted as a barrier for increased MTM enrollment. Thus, CMS may need to identify alternative strategies to increase MTM enrollment in Medicare plans.     

Medicare Part B Intensity and Volume Offset

Under Medicare Part B, adjustments to the fee schedule are made under the assumption that physicians and hospitals make up for fee reductions through increased service provision called ‘volume offsetting’. While historically, researchers have found evidence of volume offsetting, more recent studies have called into question its magnitude and existence. This study is the first to propose and empirically evaluate an alternative hypothesis of offsetting, namely the alteration of billed or provided services as a means of ‘intensity offsetting’. Evaluating both forms of offsetting, it finds strong evidence of intensity offsetting and little to no evidence of volume offsetting. Simulating a 10% reduction in the Medicare fee schedule, this study estimates that across different procedures between 22% and 59% of a fee reduction will be offset through alterations in service intensity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.