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Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia
Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have shown that facial recognition and emotional expressions are dissociable. However, it is unknown if a single system supports the processing of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions. We aimed to understand if individuals with impairment in face...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2014
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4253667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25520643 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00974 |
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author | Daini, Roberta Comparetti, Chiara M. Ricciardelli, Paola |
author_facet | Daini, Roberta Comparetti, Chiara M. Ricciardelli, Paola |
author_sort | Daini, Roberta |
collection | PubMed |
description | Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have shown that facial recognition and emotional expressions are dissociable. However, it is unknown if a single system supports the processing of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions. We aimed to understand if individuals with impairment in face recognition from birth (congenital prosopagnosia, CP) can use non-emotional facial expressions to recognize a face as an already seen one, and thus, process this facial dimension independently from features (which are impaired in CP), and basic emotional expressions. To this end, we carried out a behavioral study in which we compared the performance of 6 CP individuals to that of typical development individuals, using upright and inverted faces. Four avatar faces with a neutral expression were presented in the initial phase. The target faces presented in the recognition phase, in which a recognition task was requested (2AFC paradigm), could be identical (neutral) to those of the initial phase or present biologically plausible changes to features, non-emotional expressions, or emotional expressions. After this task, a second task was performed, in which the participants had to detect whether or not the recognized face exactly matched the study face or showed any difference. The results confirmed the CPs' impairment in the configural processing of the invariant aspects of the face, but also showed a spared configural processing of non-emotional facial expression (task 1). Interestingly and unlike the non-emotional expressions, the configural processing of emotional expressions was compromised in CPs and did not improve their change detection ability (task 2). These new results have theoretical implications for face perception models since they suggest that, at least in CPs, non-emotional expressions are processed configurally, can be dissociated from other facial dimensions, and may serve as a compensatory strategy to achieve face recognition. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4253667 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42536672014-12-17 Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia Daini, Roberta Comparetti, Chiara M. Ricciardelli, Paola Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have shown that facial recognition and emotional expressions are dissociable. However, it is unknown if a single system supports the processing of emotional and non-emotional facial expressions. We aimed to understand if individuals with impairment in face recognition from birth (congenital prosopagnosia, CP) can use non-emotional facial expressions to recognize a face as an already seen one, and thus, process this facial dimension independently from features (which are impaired in CP), and basic emotional expressions. To this end, we carried out a behavioral study in which we compared the performance of 6 CP individuals to that of typical development individuals, using upright and inverted faces. Four avatar faces with a neutral expression were presented in the initial phase. The target faces presented in the recognition phase, in which a recognition task was requested (2AFC paradigm), could be identical (neutral) to those of the initial phase or present biologically plausible changes to features, non-emotional expressions, or emotional expressions. After this task, a second task was performed, in which the participants had to detect whether or not the recognized face exactly matched the study face or showed any difference. The results confirmed the CPs' impairment in the configural processing of the invariant aspects of the face, but also showed a spared configural processing of non-emotional facial expression (task 1). Interestingly and unlike the non-emotional expressions, the configural processing of emotional expressions was compromised in CPs and did not improve their change detection ability (task 2). These new results have theoretical implications for face perception models since they suggest that, at least in CPs, non-emotional expressions are processed configurally, can be dissociated from other facial dimensions, and may serve as a compensatory strategy to achieve face recognition. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-12-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4253667/ /pubmed/25520643 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00974 Text en Copyright © 2014 Daini, Comparetti and Ricciardelli. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Daini, Roberta Comparetti, Chiara M. Ricciardelli, Paola Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
title | Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
title_full | Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
title_fullStr | Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
title_full_unstemmed | Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
title_short | Behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
title_sort | behavioral dissociation between emotional and non-emotional facial expressions in congenital prosopagnosia |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4253667/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25520643 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00974 |
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