Dehaghani Narjes Soltani, Maess Burkhard, Khosrowabadi Reza, Lashgari Reza, Braeutigam Sven, Zarei Mojtaba
Institute of Medical Science and Technology, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 May 2;16:831781. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.831781. eCollection 2022.
Face perception is crucial in all social animals. Recent studies have shown that pre-stimulus oscillations of brain activity modulate the perceptual performance of face vs. non-face stimuli, specifically under challenging conditions. However, it is unclear if this effect also occurs during simple tasks, and if so in which brain regions. Here we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and a 1-back task in which participants decided if the two sequentially presented stimuli were the same or not in each trial. The aim of the study was to explore the effect of pre-stimulus alpha oscillation on the perception of face (human and monkey) and non-face stimuli. Our results showed that pre-stimulus activity in the left occipital face area (OFA) modulated responses in the intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) at around 170 ms after the presentation of human face stimuli. This effect was also found after participants were shown images of motorcycles. In this case, the IPS was modulated by pre-stimulus activity in the right OFA and the right fusiform face area (FFA). We conclude that pre-stimulus modulation of post-stimulus response also occurs during simple tasks and is therefore independent of behavioral responses.
面部感知在所有群居动物中都至关重要。最近的研究表明，大脑活动的刺激前振荡会调节面部与非面部刺激的感知表现，特别是在具有挑战性的条件下。然而，尚不清楚这种效应在简单任务中是否也会出现，如果出现，会发生在哪些脑区。在这里，我们使用了脑磁图（MEG）和一个1-back任务，在每次试验中，参与者要判断两个相继呈现的刺激是否相同。本研究的目的是探讨刺激前α振荡对人脸（人类和猴子）和非面部刺激感知的影响。我们的结果表明，在呈现人类面部刺激后约170毫秒，左侧枕颞面部区（OFA）的刺激前活动调节了顶内沟（IPS）的反应。在向参与者展示摩托车图像后也发现了这种效应。在这种情况下，IPS受到右侧OFA和右侧梭状面部区（FFA）刺激前活动的调节。我们得出结论，刺激后反应的刺激前调制在简单任务中也会发生，因此与行为反应无关。
