Hagen Simen, Laguesse Renaud, Rossion Bruno
Université de Lorraine, CNRS, IMoPA, F-54000 Nancy, France.
Psychological Sciences Research Institute, UCLouvain, 1348 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.
Brain Sci. 2024 Jan 30;14(2):146. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14020146.
Face identity recognition (FIR) in humans is supported by specialized neural processes whose function is spectacularly impaired when simply turning a face upside-down: the face inversion effect (FIE). While the FIE appears to have a slow developmental course, little is known about the plasticity of the neural processes involved in this effect-and in FIR in general-at adulthood. Here, we investigate whether extensive training (2 weeks, ~16 h) in young human adults discriminating a large set of unfamiliar inverted faces can reduce an implicit neural marker of the FIE for a set of entirely novel faces. In all, 28 adult observers were trained to individuate 30 inverted face identities presented under different depth-rotated views. Following training, we replicate previous behavioral reports of a significant reduction (56% relative accuracy rate) in the behavioral FIE as measured with a challenging four-alternative delayed-match-to-sample task for individual faces across depth-rotated views. Most importantly, using EEG together with a validated frequency tagging approach to isolate a neural index of FIR, we observe the same substantial (56%) reduction in the neural FIE at the expected occipito-temporal channels. The reduction in the neural FIE correlates with the reduction in the behavioral FIE at the individual participant level. Overall, we provide novel evidence suggesting a substantial degree of plasticity in processes that are key for face identity recognition in the adult human brain.
人类的面部身份识别(FIR)由专门的神经过程支持,当简单地将面部倒置时,这些神经过程的功能会受到严重损害,即面部倒置效应(FIE)。虽然FIE似乎有一个缓慢的发展过程,但对于成年期参与这种效应——以及一般FIR——的神经过程的可塑性知之甚少。在这里,我们研究了年轻成年人对大量不熟悉的倒置面部进行区分的广泛训练(2周,约16小时)是否可以减少一组全新面孔的FIE的隐式神经标记。总共28名成年观察者接受训练,以区分在不同深度旋转视图下呈现的30个倒置面部身份。训练后,我们重复了之前的行为报告,即使用具有挑战性的四选一延迟匹配样本任务对不同深度旋转视图下的个体面部进行测量时,行为FIE有显著降低(相对准确率降低56%)。最重要的是,我们使用脑电图(EEG)以及经过验证的频率标记方法来分离FIR的神经指标,发现在预期的枕颞通道处,神经FIE也有同样显著的降低(56%)。在个体参与者层面,神经FIE的降低与行为FIE的降低相关。总体而言,我们提供了新的证据,表明成年人大脑中对面部身份识别至关重要的过程具有相当程度的可塑性。