title: Early visual ERP sensitivity to the species and animacy of faces.
abstract: Assessing the agency of potential actors in the visual world is a critically important aspect of social cognition. Adult observers are generally capable of distinguishing real faces from artificial faces (even allowing for recent advances in graphics technology and motion capture); even small deviations from real facial appearance can lead to profound effects on face recognition. Presently, we examined how early components of visual event-related potentials (ERPs) are affected by the "life" in human faces and animal faces. We presented participants with real and artificial faces of humans and dogs, and analyzed the response properties of the P100 and the N170 as a function of stimulus appearance and task (species categorization vs. animacy categorization). The P100 exhibited sensitivity to face species and animacy. We found that the N170's differential responses to human faces vs. dog faces depended on the task participants' performed. Also, the effect of species was only evident for real faces of humans and dogs, failing to obtain with artificial faces. These results suggest that face animacy does modulate early components of visual ERPs-the N170 is not merely a crude face detector, but reflects the tuning of the visual system to natural face appearance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58102, United States. Electronic address: Benjamin.balas@ndsu.edu.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Balas
authors.forename: Kami
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Koldewyn
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004285:Dogs; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D013045:Species Specificity; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Event-related potentials; Face perception; Social cognition
references.citation: Curr Biol. 2007 Sep 18;17(18):1568-73
references.pmid: 17764942
references.citation: Neuroreport. 2008 Mar 26;19(5):583-7
references.pmid: 18388743
references.citation: Neuroimage. 2011 Jan 1;54(1):705-13
references.pmid: 20650321
references.citation: Biol Psychol. 2012 Jan;89(1):137-47
references.pmid: 22008365
references.citation: Psychol Sci. 2010 Dec;21(12):1854-62
references.pmid: 21097720
references.citation: Neuroreport. 2004 Apr 9;15(5):905-10
references.pmid: 15073540
references.citation: Neuroimage. 2003 Nov;20(3):1609-24
references.pmid: 14642472
references.citation: Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 1996 Sep;4(2):65-76
references.pmid: 8883920
references.citation: Nat Neurosci. 2002 Sep;5(9):910-6
references.pmid: 12195430
references.citation: PLoS One. 2013;8(3):e57985
references.pmid: 23483959
references.citation: Neurosci Res. 2008 Dec;62(4):225-35
references.pmid: 18809442
references.citation: Neuropsychologia. 2012 Dec;50(14):3496-508
references.pmid: 23022078
references.citation: Neuropsychologia. 2010 Jan;48(2):498-506
references.pmid: 19836406
references.citation: Clin Neurophysiol. 2005 Nov;116(11):2613-31
references.pmid: 16214404
references.citation: Neuropsychologia. 2010 Jun;48(7):2027-40
references.pmid: 20362599
references.citation: J Cogn Neurosci. 1996 Nov;8(6):551-565
references.pmid: 20740065
references.citation: Biol Psychol. 2009 May;81(2):103-9
references.pmid: 19428974
references.citation: Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2009 Mar;9(1):122-31
references.pmid: 19246333
references.citation: Nat Neurosci. 2007 Apr;10(4):505-11
references.pmid: 17334361
references.citation: Neuropsychologia. 2011 Dec;49(14):3847-53
references.pmid: 22001852
references.citation: Neuroreport. 2009 Jul 1;20(10):902-6
references.pmid: 19474769
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2008 Aug;34(4):811-7
references.pmid: 18665727
references.citation: J Vis. 2004 Jan 30;4(1):13-21
references.pmid: 14995895
references.citation: J Neural Transm (Vienna). 2007 Jul;114(7):951-7
references.pmid: 17318308
references.citation: J Pers Soc Psychol. 1969 Dec;13(4):330-4
references.pmid: 5359231
references.citation: PLoS One. 2011 Mar 31;6(3):e17960
references.pmid: 21483856
references.citation: Comput Human Behav. 2009 May 1;25(3):695-710
references.pmid: 25506126
references.citation: Neuroreport. 2000 Jul 14;11(10):2319-24
references.pmid: 10923693
references.citation: Neuroreport. 2000 Jan 17;11(1):69-74
references.pmid: 10683832
references.citation: Perception. 2012;41(3):361-4
references.pmid: 22808589
references.citation: Front Hum Neurosci. 2011 Sep 15;5:93
references.pmid: 21954382
references.citation: J Neural Transm (Vienna). 2005 Aug;112(8):1073-81
references.pmid: 15583954