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Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces

Face perception abilities in humans exhibit a marked expertise in distinguishing individual human faces at the expense of individual faces from other species (the other-species effect). In particular, one behavioural effect of such specialization is that human adults search for and find categories o...

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Autores principales: Bayet, Laurie, Zinszer, Benjamin, Pruitt, Zoe, Aslin, Richard N., Wu, Rachel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30185919
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31526-y
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author Bayet, Laurie
Zinszer, Benjamin
Pruitt, Zoe
Aslin, Richard N.
Wu, Rachel
author_facet Bayet, Laurie
Zinszer, Benjamin
Pruitt, Zoe
Aslin, Richard N.
Wu, Rachel
author_sort Bayet, Laurie
collection PubMed
description Face perception abilities in humans exhibit a marked expertise in distinguishing individual human faces at the expense of individual faces from other species (the other-species effect). In particular, one behavioural effect of such specialization is that human adults search for and find categories of non-human faces faster and more accurately than a specific non-human face, and vice versa for human faces. However, a recent visual search study showed that neural responses (event-related potentials, ERPs) were identical when finding either a non-human or human face. We used time-resolved multivariate pattern analysis of the EEG data from that study to investigate the dynamics of neural representations during a visual search for own-species (human) or other-species (non-human ape) faces, with greater sensitivity than traditional ERP analyses. The location of each target (i.e., right or left) could be decoded from the EEG, with similar accuracy for human and non-human faces. However, the neural patterns associated with searching for an exemplar versus a category target differed for human faces compared to non-human faces: Exemplar representations could be more reliably distinguished from category representations for human than non-human faces. These findings suggest that the other-species effect modulates the nature of representations, but preserves the attentional selection of target items based on these representations.
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spelling pubmed-61254832018-09-10 Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces Bayet, Laurie Zinszer, Benjamin Pruitt, Zoe Aslin, Richard N. Wu, Rachel Sci Rep Article Face perception abilities in humans exhibit a marked expertise in distinguishing individual human faces at the expense of individual faces from other species (the other-species effect). In particular, one behavioural effect of such specialization is that human adults search for and find categories of non-human faces faster and more accurately than a specific non-human face, and vice versa for human faces. However, a recent visual search study showed that neural responses (event-related potentials, ERPs) were identical when finding either a non-human or human face. We used time-resolved multivariate pattern analysis of the EEG data from that study to investigate the dynamics of neural representations during a visual search for own-species (human) or other-species (non-human ape) faces, with greater sensitivity than traditional ERP analyses. The location of each target (i.e., right or left) could be decoded from the EEG, with similar accuracy for human and non-human faces. However, the neural patterns associated with searching for an exemplar versus a category target differed for human faces compared to non-human faces: Exemplar representations could be more reliably distinguished from category representations for human than non-human faces. These findings suggest that the other-species effect modulates the nature of representations, but preserves the attentional selection of target items based on these representations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-09-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6125483/ /pubmed/30185919 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31526-y Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Bayet, Laurie
Zinszer, Benjamin
Pruitt, Zoe
Aslin, Richard N.
Wu, Rachel
Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
title Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
title_full Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
title_fullStr Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
title_full_unstemmed Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
title_short Dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
title_sort dynamics of neural representations when searching for exemplars and categories of human and non-human faces
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30185919
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31526-y
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