A neuroimaging point of view on the diversity of social cognition: evidence for extended influence of experience- and emotion-related factors on face processing

Abstract

Faces are key social stimuli that convey a wealth of information essential for person perception and adaptive interpersonal behaviour. Studies in the domain of cognitive, affective, and social neuroscience have put in light that the processing of faces recruits specific visual regions and activates a distributed set of brain regions related to attentional, emotional, social, and memory processes associated with the perception of faces and the extraction of the numerous information attached to them. Studies using neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have allowed localizing these brain regions and characterizing their functional properties. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) techniques are complementary to fMRI in that they offer a unique insight into the temporal dynamics of mental processes. In this article, I review the contribution of neuroimaging techniques to the knowledge on face processing and person perception with the aim of putting in light the extended influence of experience-related factors, particularly in relation with emotions, on the face processing system. Although the face processing network has evolved under evolutionary selection pressure related to sociality-related needs and is therefore highly conserved throughout the human species, neuroimaging studies put in light both the extension and the flexibility of the brain network involved in face processing. MEG and EEG allow in particular to reveal that the human brain integrates emotion- and experience-related information from the earliest stage of face processing. Altogether, this emphasizes the diversity of social cognitive processes associated with face perception.

Altered upright face recognition and presence of face inversion effect in temporal lobe epilepsy: An event‐related potential study

“…No significant interactions were observed between the direction and hemisphere in the anova of the N170 amplitudes; therefore, correlational analyses were performed using the average N170 amplitudes at 10 channels (five for each hemisphere), based on the methods of a previous study, to investigate SES discrimination between TLE patients and NC. Although many social cognitive processes have been associated with face perception, prior studies of these processes in TLE patients are scarce. Therefore, after we controlled for the laterality of the epileptic focus, we investigated the correlation between the average N170 amplitudes at 10 electrodes for both hemispheres in response to upright faces and the SES score.…”

Minimal group membership biases early neural processing of emotional expressions

“…The present early effect does not necessarily signify that all the information from the faces is extracted within this early time window (a main effect of emotion was found later on the N170). Rather, they suggest that the very first stages of face processing, during which physical facial features are extracted, are susceptible to prior experience (Morel et al ., ), possibly involving early interaction between bottom‐up and top‐down feeds of information processing (George, ). However, it is important to mention that, while fitting previous evidence that prior social knowledge influences perceptual processing through top‐down mechanisms (Gamond et al ., ; Quadflieg et al ., ), both the fMRI results and the correlation should be considered with caution, as these analyses did not survive all statistical corrections (i.e., individual voxel level in fMRI results, see Eklund et al ., ).…”

Reflections on Neurofeminism and Intersectionality Using Insights From Psychology

“…Concerning neuroscientific approaches, abundant research exists within the field of facial processing and decision-making, but this research has not been informed by intersectionality. Extant studies have investigated the neural correlates of “social categories” ( Wiese et al, 2008 ; George, 2016 ; Stolier and Freeman, 2017 ; Delplanque et al, 2019 ; Brooks et al, 2020 ), using narrow examinations of single constructs such as sex/gender, racial categorization, race-related prejudice or sex/gender stereotyping (e.g., Kaul et al, 2011 ; Senholzi et al, 2015 ; Mattan et al, 2018 ; Fisher et al, 2020 ). To our knowledge, only one study has investigated the neural correlates of face processing of multiple social group memberships in face processing.…”