title: Women are better at seeing faces where there are none: an ERP study of face pareidolia.
abstract: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 26 right-handed students while they detected pictures of animals intermixed with those of familiar objects, faces and faces-in-things (FITs). The face-specific N170 ERP component over the right hemisphere was larger in response to faces and FITs than to objects. The vertex positive potential (VPP) showed a difference in FIT encoding processes between males and females at frontal sites; while for men, the FIT stimuli elicited a VPP of intermediate amplitude (between that for faces and objects), for women, there was no difference in VPP responses to faces or FITs, suggesting a marked anthropomorphization of objects in women. SwLORETA source reconstructions carried out to estimate the intracortical generators of ERPs in the 150-190 ms time window showed how, in the female brain, FIT perception was associated with the activation of brain areas involved in the affective processing of faces (right STS, BA22; posterior cingulate cortex, BA22; and orbitofrontal cortex, BA10) in addition to regions linked to shape processing (left cuneus, BA18/30). Conversely, in the men, the activation of occipito/parietal regions was prevalent, with a considerably smaller activation of BA10. The data suggest that the female brain is more inclined to anthropomorphize perfectly real objects compared to the male brain.
authors.affiliation: Department Of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy mado.proverbio@unimib.it.
authors.forename: Alice M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Proverbio
authors.affiliation: Department Of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Galli
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ERPs; face processing; perception; sex differences; social cognition