Spatio-temporal localization of the face inversion effect: an event-related potentials study

Rossion, Bruno; Delvenne, Jean‐François; Debatisse, D.; Goffaux, Valérie; Bruyer, Raymond; Crommelinck, Marc; Guérit, Jean‐Michel

doi:10.1016/s0301-0511(99)00013-7

Cited by 373 publications

(295 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…With this theory there is no need to invoke the extra recruitment of object sensitive neurons to account for the increase in N170 amplitude with face inversion, as proposed previously (e.g. Rossion et al, 1999;Itier & Taylor, 2002, Sadeh & Yovel, 2010, Yovel & Kanwisher, 2005. The FIE can be explained simply by the cancellation of the lateral inhibitions and foveal magnification.…”

Section: Implications Of the Lifted Model For Visual Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Tanaka & Farah, 1993;Tanaka & Gordon, 2011) and that inversion disrupts this holistic processing (Rossion, 2009). In ERP studies, faces presented upside down trigger delayed but most importantly larger N170s compared to upright faces (Bentin et al, 1996;Itier & Taylor, 2002;Rossion et al, 1999), while upside down objects usually elicit only delayed responses (Itier et al, 2006;Kloth et al, 2013). Similar to objects, animal faces or impoverished human face stimuli, such as sketches or Mooney faces, also show delayed N170 with inversion but no increase in amplitude and sometimes even a slight amplitude reduction (de Haan et al, 2002;Itier et al, 2006;Itier et al, 2011;Latinus & Taylor, 2005;Sagiv & Bentin, 2001;Wiese et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The amplitude increase with inversion, also termed the N170 "face inversion effect" (FIE), is thus believed to reflect the disruption of early holistic processing stages specific to human faces and has been used as a hallmark of face specificity. At the neuronal level, this increase has been explained by the recruitment, in addition to face-sensitive neurons, of object-sensitive neurons (Itier & Taylor, 2002;Rossion et al, 1999;Sadeh & Yovel, 2010;Yovel & Kanwisher, 2005), other facesensitive neurons tuned to the inverted orientation (Eimer et al, 2010), or eye-sensitive neurons (Itier et al, 2007). Itier et al (2007) showed that, in contrast to intact faces, inversion of eyeless faces elicited a much reduced N170 FIE and thus proposed that eyes played an important role in this early face specific phenomenon, an idea reinforced by the replication of this finding in later studies Kloth et al, 2013;Nemrodov & Itier, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early sensitivity for eyes within faces: A new neuronal account of holistic and featural processing

et al. 2014

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Eyes are central to face processing however their role in early face encoding as reflected by the N170 ERP component is unclear. Using eye tracking to enforce fixation on specific facial features, we found that the N170 was larger for fixation on the eyes compared to fixation on the forehead, nasion, nose or mouth, which all yielded similar amplitudes. This eye sensitivity was seen in both upright and inverted faces and was lost in eyeless faces, demonstrating it was due to the presence of eyes at fovea. Upright eyeless faces elicited largest N170 at nose fixation. Importantly, the N170 face inversion effect (FIE) was strongly attenuated in eyeless faces when fixation was on the eyes but was less attenuated for nose fixation and was normal when fixation was on the mouth. These results suggest the impact of eye removal on the N170 FIE is a function of the angular distance between the fixated feature and the eye location. We propose the Lateral Inhibition, Face Template and Eye Detector based (LIFTED) model which accounts for all the present N170 results including the FIE and its interaction with eye removal. Although eyes elicit the largest N170 response, reflecting the activity of an eye detector, the processing of upright faces is holistic and entails an inhibitory mechanism from neurons coding parafoveal information onto neurons coding foveal information. The LIFTED model provides a neuronal account of holistic and featural processing involved in upright and inverted faces and offers precise predictions for further testing.

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Section: Implications Of the Lifted Model For Visual Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early sensitivity for eyes within faces: A new neuronal account of holistic and featural processing

et al. 2014

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“…However, generators for the N170 have been located in other face processing areas including superior temporal sulcus (Itier and Taylor, 2004b;Joyce and Rossion, 2005). Further, as compared with FFA activations, which are decreased or the same to inverted faces (Haxby et al, 1999;Yovel and Kanwisher, 2005), the N170 is consistently larger to inverted vs. upright faces (Itier and Taylor, 2004a;Rossion et al, 1999), again suggesting involvement of regions other than FFA.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

What's in a face? Effects of stimulus duration and inversion on face processing in schizophrenia

Butler

Tambini

Yovel

et al. 2008

Schizophrenia Research

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A number of studies show deficits in early-stage visual processing in schizophrenia. Deficits are also seen at more complex levels, such as ability to discriminate faces. This study investigated the "face inversion" effect, which reflects intrinsic cortical processing within the ventral visual stream, as well as contrast sensitivity, which reflects low-level visual processing, in order to evaluate integrity of specific stages of face processing in schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia and controls discriminated between pairs of upright or inverted faces or houses that had been manipulated to differ in the shape of the parts or the spatial distance among parts. The duration threshold for above chance performance on upright stimuli was obtained for patients using a house discrimination task. Contrast sensitivity was assessed for gratings of three spatial frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 21 cycles/degree. Patients needed significantly longer time to obtain 70% correct for upright stimuli and showed decreased contrast sensitivity. Increased duration threshold correlated with reduced contrast sensitivity to low (magnocellular-biased) but not medium or high spatial frequency stimuli. Using increased durations, patients showed significant inversion effects that were equivalent to those of controls on the face part and spacing tasks. Like controls, patients did not show inversion effects on the house tasks. These findings show that patients have difficulty integrating visual information as shown by increased duration thresholds. However, when faces were presented at these longer duration thresholds, patients showed the same relative processing ability for upright vs. inverted faces as controls, suggesting preserved intrinsic processing within cortical face processing regions. Similar inversion effects for face part and spacing for both groups suggest that they are using the same holistic face processing mechanism.

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“…Face inversion effect has already been observed on N170. This component is usually delayed and sometimes enhanced in response to upside-down relative to upright faces [3,45,46]. However, a noticeable exception to this enhancement effect has been provided by Sagiv and Bentin [47] who showed that while inverting photographs of faces yielded the "classical" face inversion effect on N170, inverting schematic -impoverished -representations of faces yielded a decrease in N170 amplitude.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrophysiological correlates of facial decision: Insights from upright and upside-down Mooney-face perception

George

Jemel

Fiori

et al. 2005

Cognitive Brain Research

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We investigated the ERP correlates of the subjective perception of upright and upside-down ambiguous pictures as faces using two-tone Mooney stimuli in an explicit facial decision task (deciding whether a face is perceived or not in the display). The difficulty in perceiving upside-down Mooneys as faces was reflected by both lower rates of "face" responses and delayed "face" reaction times for upside-down relative to upright stimuli. The N170 was larger for the stimuli reported as "faces". It was also larger for the upright than the upsidedown stimuli only when they were reported as faces. Furthermore, facial decision as well as stimulus orientation effects spread from 140-190 ms to 390-440 ms. The behavioural delay in 'face' responses to upside-down stimuli was reflected in ERPs by later effect of facial decision for upside-down relative to upright Mooneys over occipito-temporal electrodes.Moreover, an orientation effect was observed only for the stimuli reported as faces; it yielded a marked hemispheric asymmetry, lasting from 140-190 ms to 390-440 ms post-stimulus onset in the left hemisphere, and from 340-390 to 390-440 ms only in the right hemisphere.Taken together the results supported a preferential involvement of the right hemisphere in the detection of faces, whatever their orientation. By contrast, the early orientation effect in the left hemisphere suggested that upside-down Mooney stimuli were processed as non face objects until facial decision was reached in this hemisphere. The present data show that face perception involves not only spatially but also temporally distributed activities in occipitotemporal regions.

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Spatio-temporal localization of the face inversion effect: an event-related potentials study

Cited by 373 publications

References 43 publications

Early sensitivity for eyes within faces: A new neuronal account of holistic and featural processing

Early sensitivity for eyes within faces: A new neuronal account of holistic and featural processing

What's in a face? Effects of stimulus duration and inversion on face processing in schizophrenia

Electrophysiological correlates of facial decision: Insights from upright and upside-down Mooney-face perception

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