Brain potentials reflect access to visual and emotional memories for faces.
Familiar faces convey different types of information, unlocking memories related to social-emotional significance. Here, the availability over time of different types of memory was evaluated using the time-course of P3 event related potentials. Two oddball paradigms were employed, both using unfamiliar faces as standards. The infrequent targets were, respectively, artificially-learned faces (devoid of social-emotional content) and faces of acquaintances. Although in both tasks targets were detected accurately, the corresponding time-course and scalp distribution of the P3 responses differed. Artificially-learned and acquaintance faces both elicited a P3b, maximal over centro-parietal sites, and a latency of 500ms. Faces of acquaintances elicited an additional component, an early P3 maximal over frontal sites: with a latency of 350ms. This suggests that visual familiarity can only trigger the overt recognition processes leading to the slower P3b, whereas emotional-social information can also elicit fast and automatic assessments (indexed by the frontal-P3) crucial for successful social interactions.
Bobes
Maria A
MA
Cognitive Neuroscience Department, Cuban Center for Neuroscience, Ave. 25 y 158, Cubanacan, Apartado 6880, Havana, Cuba. antonieta@cneuro.edu.cu
Quiñonez
Ileana
I
Perez
Jhoanna
J
Leon
Inmaculada
I
Valdés-Sosa
Mitchell
M
D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D012938:Social Perception