Schyns Philippe G, Jentzsch Ines, Johnson Mark, Schweinberger Stefan R, Gosselin Frédéric
Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, 58 Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 8QB, Scotland, UK.
Neuroreport. 2003 Sep 15;14(13):1665-9. doi: 10.1097/00001756-200309150-00002.
A challenging issue in relating brain function to perception and cognition concerns the functional interpretation of brain responses. For example, while there is agreement that the N170 component of event-related potentials is sensitive to face processing, there is considerable debate about whether its response reflects a structural encoder for faces, a feature (e.g. eye) detector, or something else. We introduce a principled approach to determine the stimulus features driving brain responses. Our analyses on two observers resolving different face categorization tasks (gender and expressive or not) reveal that the N170 responds to the eyes within a face irrespective of task demands. This suggests a new methodology to attribute function to different components of the neural system for perceiving complex stimuli.
将大脑功能与感知和认知联系起来的一个具有挑战性的问题涉及到对大脑反应的功能解释。例如，虽然人们一致认为事件相关电位的N170成分对面部处理敏感，但对于其反应是反映面部的结构编码器、特征（如眼睛）检测器还是其他东西，存在相当大的争论。我们引入了一种有原则的方法来确定驱动大脑反应的刺激特征。我们对两名解决不同面部分类任务（性别和是否有表情）的观察者的分析表明，无论任务要求如何，N170都会对面部中的眼睛做出反应。这为将功能归因于感知复杂刺激的神经系统的不同成分提出了一种新方法。
