title: Emotional facial expression detection in the peripheral visual field.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In everyday life, signals of danger, such as aversive facial expressions, usually appear in the peripheral visual field. Although facial expression processing in central vision has been extensively studied, this processing in peripheral vision has been poorly studied.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Using behavioral measures, we explored the human ability to detect fear and disgust vs. neutral expressions and compared it to the ability to discriminate between genders at eccentricities up to 40°. Responses were faster for the detection of emotion compared to gender. Emotion was detected from fearful faces up to 40° of eccentricity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results demonstrate the human ability to detect facial expressions presented in the far periphery up to 40° of eccentricity. The increasing advantage of emotion compared to gender processing with increasing eccentricity might reflect a major implication of the magnocellular visual pathway in facial expression processing. This advantage may suggest that emotion detection, relative to gender identification, is less impacted by visual acuity and within-face crowding in the periphery. These results are consistent with specific and automatic processing of danger-related information, which may drive attention to those messages and allow for a fast behavioral reaction.
authors: Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS UMR5292, Brain Dynamics and Cognition Team, Lyon, France. dimitri.bayle@inserm.fr
authors: Dimitri J
authors: DJ
authors: Bayle
authors: Benjamin
authors: B
authors: Schoendorff
authors: Marie-Anne
authors: MA
authors: Hénaff
authors: Pierre
authors: P
authors: Krolak-Salmon
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult