Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives UMR 7291, Aix-Marseille Université, Fédération 3C (FR 3512), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France.
School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Mar 2;139:107360. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107360. Epub 2020 Jan 23.
Social stimuli such as faces attract and retain attention to a greater extent than other objects. Using fMRI, we investigated how the activity of oculomotor and visual brain regions is modulated when participants look towards or away from visual stimuli belonging to different categories (faces and cars). We identified a region within the superior frontal sulcus showing greater difference between anti- and pro-saccades to faces than to cars, and thereby supporting inhibitory control in a social context. In contrast, ventral occipito-temporal regions and the amygdala, which are associated with face perception, showed higher activity for pro-saccades than anti-saccades for faces, but the reverse for cars, suggesting that contextual, top-down mechanisms modulate the functional specialisation of areas involved in perception. In addition, during saccades in the presence of faces, we found increased functional connectivity between the frontal eye-fields and other cortical and subcortical oculomotor structures, namely the inferior frontal eye field, the posterior parietal cortex and the basal ganglia, possibly reflecting the higher demand put on the oculomotor system to inhibit responses to socially salient stimuli. For the first time, these data highlight neural bases for the different orienting responses towards or away from faces as compared to other objects.
社会刺激物，如人脸，比其他物体更能吸引和保持注意力。我们使用 fMRI 来研究当参与者将目光投向或远离属于不同类别的视觉刺激物（人脸和汽车）时，眼动和视觉脑区的活动如何被调节。我们在额上沟内发现了一个区域，该区域在反扫视和正扫视人脸时的活动差异大于汽车，因此支持了社会情境中的抑制控制。相比之下，与面孔感知相关的腹侧枕颞区和杏仁核在正扫视时比反扫视时的活动更高，但汽车则相反，这表明上下文的自上而下的机制调节了参与感知的区域的功能专业化。此外，在存在人脸的扫视期间，我们发现额叶眼区与其他皮质和皮质下眼动结构之间的功能连接增加，即下额叶眼区、后顶叶皮层和基底神经节，这可能反映了对眼球运动系统的更高要求，以抑制对社会显著刺激物的反应。这些数据首次强调了与其他物体相比，眼球朝向或远离人脸的不同定向反应的神经基础。
