Fixation location on upright and inverted faces modulates the N170

Lissa, Peter de; McArthur, Genevieve; Hawelka, Stefan; Palermo, Romina; Mahajan, Yatin; Hutzler, Florian

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.02.006

Cited by 44 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…This fixation effect reflects hemifield presentation effects as most of the facial information was in the left visual field when fixation was on the right eye and the right visual field when fixation was on the left eye (Fig.1A). This effect mirrors fixation effects reported by recent studies using similar gaze-contingent procedures (de Lissa et al, 2014;Neath & Itier, 2015;Nemrodov et al, 2014;Zerouali, Lena, & Jemel, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…3A) compared to the nose and mouth fixations (de Lissa et al, 2014;Neath & Itier, 2015;Nemrodov et al, 2014). This larger amplitude for the eyes was also found with the mean amplitude analysis at lateral-posterior sites between 150-200ms and supports the idea of a special role for the processing of eyes at the level of the face structural encoding.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…This hemifield effect was virtually identical between Exp.1 and 2 and reproduced Neath and Itier's finding (2015). A similar effect was also reported in the first studies using the gaze-contingent procedure with expressionless faces (de Lissa et al, 2014;Nemrodov et al, 2014 -supplementary information;Zerouali et al, 2013). This P1 sensitivity to face position was also revealed by a larger P1 response when fixation was on the mouth compared to each of the other locations, as also found in our previous gender discrimination task (Neath & Itier, 2015).…”

Section: P1 Sensitivity To Face Positionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…A face stimulus was then presented offset so as to put the desired feature in fovea, at the location of the fixation cross. We expected to replicate the findings of Neath and Itier (2015) regarding low-level stimulus position effects on the P1, as well as the larger N170 amplitude for fixation to the eyes compared to the nose and mouth (see also de Lissa et al, 2014;Nemrodov, Anderson, Preston, & Itier, 2014). We also hoped to reproduce their distinct spatio-temporal pattern of fear and happiness effects.…”

Section: Role Of Facial Features In the Processing Of Facial Expressionmentioning

confidence: 75%

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Neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions during emotion-relevant and emotion-irrelevant tasks: A fixation-to-feature approach

Neath-Tavares

Itier

2016

Biological Psychology

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Research suggests an important role of the eyes and mouth for discriminating facial expressions of emotion. A gaze-contingent procedure was used to test the impact of fixation to facial features on the neural response to fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions in an emotion discrimination (Exp.1) and an oddball detection (Exp.2) task. The N170 was the only eye-sensitive ERP component, and this sensitivity did not vary across facial expressions. In both tasks, compared to neutral faces, responses to happy expressions were seen as early as 100-120ms occipitally, while responses to fearful expressions started around 150ms, on or after the N170, at both occipital and lateral-posterior sites. Analyses of scalp topographies revealed different distributions of these two emotion effects across most of the epoch. Emotion processing interacted with fixation location at different times between tasks. Results suggest a role of both the eyes and mouth in the neural processing of fearful expressions and of the mouth in the processing of happy expressions, before 350ms.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: P1 Sensitivity To Face Positionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Role Of Facial Features In the Processing Of Facial Expressionmentioning

confidence: 75%

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Neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions during emotion-relevant and emotion-irrelevant tasks: A fixation-to-feature approach

Neath-Tavares

Itier

2016

Biological Psychology

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“…However, because Itier et al (2007) and Gandhi et al (2012) did not manipulate gaze location, these studies could not determine whether this differential effect depends critically on a fixation position near the eye region. A recent study (Nemrodov et al, 2014) has demonstrated that N170 face inversion 5 effects are strongly modulated by the current location of fixation (see also De Lissa et al, 2014, for similar findings), and this might also be the case for N170 modulations that triggered by changing the contrast polarity of faces or face parts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Effects of contrast inversion on face perception depend on gaze location: Evidence from the N170 component

Fisher

Towler

Eimer

2015

Cognitive Neuroscience

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Face recognition is known to be impaired when the contrast polarity of the eyes is inverted. We studied how contrast affects early perceptual face processing by measuring the face-sensitive N170 component to face images when the contrast of the eyes and of the rest of the face was independently manipulated. Fixation was either located on the eye region or on the lower part of a face. Contrast-reversal of the eyes triggered delayed and enhanced N170 components independently of the contrast of other face parts, and regardless of gaze location. Similar N170 modulations were observed when the rest of a face was contrast-inverted, but only when gaze was directed away from the eyes. Results demonstrate that the contrast of the eyes and of other face parts can both affect face perception, but that the contrast polarity of the eye region has a privileged role during early stages of face processing.

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Increased Early Sensitivity to Eyes in Mouthless Faces: In Support of the LIFTED Model of Early Face Processing

Itier

Preston

2018

Brain Topogr

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The N170 ERP component is a central neural marker of early face perception usually thought to reflect holistic processing. However, it is also highly sensitive to eyes presented in isolation and to fixation on the eyes within a full face. The lateral inhibition face template and eye detector (LIFTED) model (Nemrodov et al. in NeuroImage 97:81-94, 2014) integrates these views by proposing a neural inhibition mechanism that perceptually glues features into a whole, in parallel to the activity of an eye detector that accounts for the eye sensitivity. The LIFTED model was derived from a large number of results obtained with intact and eyeless faces presented upright and inverted. The present study provided a control condition to the original design by replacing eyeless with mouthless faces, hereby enabling testing of specific predictions derived from the model. Using the same gaze-contingent approach, we replicated the N170 eye sensitivity regardless of face orientation. Furthermore, when eyes were fixated in upright faces, the N170 was larger for mouthless compared to intact faces, while inverted mouthless faces elicited smaller amplitude than intact inverted faces when fixation was on the mouth and nose. The results are largely in line with the LIFTED model, in particular with the idea of an inhibition mechanism involved in holistic processing of upright faces and the lack of such inhibition in processing inverted faces. Some modifications to the original model are also proposed based on these results.

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Fixation location on upright and inverted faces modulates the N170

Cited by 44 publications

References 32 publications

Neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions during emotion-relevant and emotion-irrelevant tasks: A fixation-to-feature approach

Neural processing of fearful and happy facial expressions during emotion-relevant and emotion-irrelevant tasks: A fixation-to-feature approach

Effects of contrast inversion on face perception depend on gaze location: Evidence from the N170 component

Increased Early Sensitivity to Eyes in Mouthless Faces: In Support of the LIFTED Model of Early Face Processing

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