Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011 Mar 31;6(3):e17960. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0017960.
Faces are visual objects that hold special significance as the icons of other minds. Previous researchers using event-related potentials (ERPs) have found that faces are uniquely associated with an increased N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) and a more sustained frontal positivity. Here, we examined the processing of faces as objects vs. faces as cues to minds by contrasting images of faces possessing minds (human faces), faces lacking minds (doll faces), and non-face objects (i.e., clocks). Although both doll and human faces were associated with an increased N170/VPP from 175-200 ms following stimulus onset, only human faces were associated with a sustained positivity beyond 400 ms. Our data suggest that the N170/VPP reflects the object-based processing of faces, whether of dolls or humans; on the other hand, the later positivity appears to uniquely index the processing of human faces--which are more salient and convey information about identity and the presence of other minds.
面孔是视觉对象，作为其他思维的图标具有特殊意义。以前使用事件相关电位 (ERP) 的研究人员发现，面孔与增加的 N170/顶点正电势 (VPP) 和更持续的额部正电势独特相关。在这里，我们通过对比具有思维的面孔（人脸）、缺乏思维的面孔（玩偶脸）和非面孔物体（即时钟）的图像，研究了面孔作为物体与面孔作为思维线索的处理。尽管玩偶和人脸在刺激开始后 175-200 毫秒时都与 N170/VPP 的增加有关，但只有人脸在 400 毫秒后与持续的正性有关。我们的数据表明，N170/VPP 反映了面孔的基于对象的处理，无论是玩偶还是人类；另一方面，后期正性似乎独特地索引了人类面孔的处理——人类面孔更突出，并传达有关身份和其他思维存在的信息。
