title: The electrophysiological correlates of integrated face and body-part perception.
abstract: Previous studies have suggested that the human visual system processes faces and bodies holistically-that is, the different body parts are integrated into a unified representation. However, the time course of this integrative process is less known. In the present study, we investigated this issue by recording event-related potentials evoked by a face and two hands presented simultaneously and in different configurations. When the hands were rotated to obtain a biologically implausible configuration, a reduction of the P2 amplitude was observed relative to the condition in which the face and hands were retained in their veridical configuration and were supplemented with visual cues to highlight further the overall body posture. Our results show that the P2 component is sensitive to manipulations affecting the configuration of face and hand stimuli and suggest that the P2 reflects the operation of perceptual mechanisms responsible for the integrated processing of visually presented body parts.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Pál
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vakli
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Kornél
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Németh
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Márta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zimmer
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.|b Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Jena, Germany.|c DFG Research Unit Person Perception, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Gyula
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kovács
keywords: Body Gestalt; Body perception; Face perception; Holistic processing; P2