Liu Jiangang, Li Jun, Feng Lu, Li Ling, Tian Jie, Lee Kang
School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China; Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi'an, China.
Cortex. 2014 Apr;53:60-77. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.013. Epub 2014 Jan 31.
Face pareidolia is the illusory perception of non-existent faces. The present study, for the first time, contrasted behavioral and neural responses of face pareidolia with those of letter pareidolia to explore face-specific behavioral and neural responses during illusory face processing. Participants were shown pure-noise images but were led to believe that 50% of them contained either faces or letters; they reported seeing faces or letters illusorily 34% and 38% of the time, respectively. The right fusiform face area (rFFA) showed a specific response when participants "saw" faces as opposed to letters in the pure-noise images. Behavioral responses during face pareidolia produced a classification image (CI) that resembled a face, whereas those during letter pareidolia produced a CI that was letter-like. Further, the extent to which such behavioral CIs resembled faces was directly related to the level of face-specific activations in the rFFA. This finding suggests that the rFFA plays a specific role not only in processing of real faces but also in illusory face perception, perhaps serving to facilitate the interaction between bottom-up information from the primary visual cortex and top-down signals from the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Whole brain analyses revealed a network specialized in face pareidolia, including both the frontal and occipitotemporal regions. Our findings suggest that human face processing has a strong top-down component whereby sensory input with even the slightest suggestion of a face can result in the interpretation of a face.
面部空想性错视是对不存在的面部的虚幻感知。本研究首次将面部空想性错视的行为和神经反应与字母空想性错视的行为和神经反应进行对比，以探索虚幻面部加工过程中面部特异性的行为和神经反应。向参与者展示纯噪声图像，但让他们相信其中50%包含面部或字母；他们分别有34%和38%的时间虚幻地报告看到了面部或字母。当参与者在纯噪声图像中“看到”面部而非字母时，右侧梭状回面孔区（rFFA）表现出特异性反应。面部空想性错视期间的行为反应产生了一个类似于面部的分类图像（CI），而字母空想性错视期间的行为反应产生了一个类似字母的CI。此外，这种行为CI与面部相似的程度与rFFA中面部特异性激活的水平直接相关。这一发现表明，rFFA不仅在真实面部的加工中起特定作用，而且在虚幻面部感知中也起特定作用，可能有助于促进来自初级视觉皮层的自下而上信息与来自前额叶皮层（PFC）的自上而下信号之间的相互作用。全脑分析揭示了一个专门处理面部空想性错视的网络，包括额叶和枕颞叶区域。我们的研究结果表明，人类面部加工具有很强的自上而下成分，即即使是带有最轻微面部暗示的感觉输入也会导致对面部的解读。
