Unique morphology of the human eye

Kobayashi, Hiromi; Kohshima, Shiro

doi:10.1038/42842

Cited by 471 publications

(391 citation statements)

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“…Humans have physiologically evolved to communicate their eye gaze direction to others (for example by having a high contrast between the iris and sclera see Kobayashi & Koshima, 1997), but the function of attentional orienting to the eyes is not fully understood. Evidence suggests, however, that the ability to share others' goals and intentions (i.e., theory of mind) is fundamentally linked to orienting to another's gaze (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze allocation in a dynamic situation: Effects of social status and speaking

et al. 2010

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a b s t r a c tHuman visual attention operates in a context that is complex, social and dynamic. To explore this, we recorded people taking part in a group decision-making task and then showed video clips of these situations to new participants while tracking their eye movements. Observers spent the majority of time looking at the people in the videos, and in particular at their eyes and faces. The social status of the people in the clips had been rated by their peers in the group task, and this status hierarchy strongly predicted where eyetracker participants looked: high-status individuals were gazed at much more often, and for longer, than low-status individuals, even over short, 20-s videos. Fixation was temporally coupled to the person who was talking at any one time, but this did not account for the effect of social status on attention. These results are consistent with a gaze system that is attuned to the presence of other individuals, to their social status within a group, and to the information most useful for social interaction.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze allocation in a dynamic situation: Effects of social status and speaking

et al. 2010

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“…The contrast visible on the face is also often limited due to skin pigmentation, reduced outer lip vermillion, and substantially different eye morphology, which most notably lacks the white sclera which make human eye movements (and changes in the surrounding area) more readily perceptible (Kobayashi & Kohshima, 1997Ekman et al, 2002). While these features can make identifying facial movement more challenging, the texture of the chimpanzee face (with many visible lines and wrinkles) can facilitate some AU identifications.…”

Section: Development Of Chimp Facsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most notably, the heavier brows and reduced contrast in terms of eye morphology (Kobayashi & Kohshima, 1997) make small movements around the eyes difficult to detect. In humans, AU5 Upper Lid Raiser and AU7 Lids Tightener both depend upon detecting changes to extent of visible sclera.…”

Section: Au6 Cheek Raiser and Lidmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cross-species Comparison of Facial Morphology and Movement in Humans and Chimpanzees Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

et al. 2006

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A comparative perspective has remained central to the study of human facial expressions since Darwin's [(1872Darwin's [( /1998. The expression of the emotions in man and animals (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press] insightful observations on the presence and significance of cross-species continuities and species-unique phenomena. However, cross-species comparisons are often difficult to draw due to methodological limitations. We report the application of a common methodology, the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to examine facial movement across two species of hominoids, namely humans and chimpanzees. FACS [Ekman & Friesen (1978). Facial action coding system. CA: Consulting Psychology Press] has been employed to identify the repertoire of human facial movements. We demonstrate that FACS can be applied to other species, but highlight that any modifications must be based on both underlying anatomy and detailed observational analysis of movements. Here we describe the ChimpFACS and use it to compare the repertoire of facial movement in chimpanzees and humans. While the underlying mimetic musculature shows minimal differences, important differences in facial morphology impact upon the identification and detection of related surface appearance changes across these two species.

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“…The eyes are central to all aspects of face processing including identity, emotion and gaze discrimination (see Itier and Batty, 2009 for a recent review) and the N170 is sensitive to eyes as shown by equally large or larger amplitudes for eyes than faces (Bentin et al, 1996;Itier et al, 2006;Itier et al, 2007;Jemel et al, 1999;Taylor et al, 2001). Because human eyes have a distinct morphology compared to eyes of other animals, including a white sclera that other species do not possess (Kobayashi and Kohshima, 1997), species sensitivity for eyes seems sensible. To our knowledge, only one previous study investigated the early neural response to eyes of various species and reported a larger N170 to human eyes compared to dog and cat eyes (Shibata et al, 2002), supporting an early species sensitivity to eyes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species sensitivity of early face and eye processing

2011

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Humans are better at recognizing human faces than faces of other species. However, it is unclear whether this species sensitivity can be seen at early perceptual stages of face processing and whether it involves species sensitivity for important facial features like the eyes. These questions were addressed by comparing the modulations of the N170 ERP component to faces, eyes and eyeless faces of humans, apes, cats and dogs, presented upright and inverted. Although all faces and isolated eyes yielded larger responses than the control object category (houses), the N170 was shorter and smaller to human than animal faces and larger to human than animal eyes. Most importantly, while the classic inversion effect was found for human faces, animal faces yielded no inversion effect or an opposite inversion effect, as seen for objects, suggesting a different neural process involved for humans faces compared to faces of other species. Thus, in addition to its general face and eye categorical sensitivity, the N170 appears particularly sensitive to the human species for both faces and eyes. The results are discussed in the context of a recent model of the N170 response involving face and eye sensitive neurons (Itier et al., 2007) where the eyes play a central role in face perception. The data support the intuitive idea that eyes are what make animal head fronts look face-like and that proficiency for the human species involves visual expertise for the human eyes.

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Unique morphology of the human eye

Cited by 471 publications

References 1 publication

Gaze allocation in a dynamic situation: Effects of social status and speaking

Gaze allocation in a dynamic situation: Effects of social status and speaking

A Cross-species Comparison of Facial Morphology and Movement in Humans and Chimpanzees Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

Species sensitivity of early face and eye processing

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