Ossandón José P, Rossion Bruno, Dormal Giulia, Kekunnaya Ramesh, Röder Brigitte
Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany.
Université de Lorraine, CNRS, IMoPA, Nancy, France; Université de Lorraine, CHRU-Nancy, Service de Neurologie, Nancy, France.
Cortex. 2025 Jun;187:124-139. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2025.04.007. Epub 2025 Apr 26.
Transient early visual deprivation in humans impairs the processing of faces more than of other object categories. While configural face processing and face individuation appear to be largely impaired in sight recovery individuals following congenital visual deprivation, their behavioral ability to categorize stimuli as faces has been described as preserved. Here we thoroughly investigated rapid automatic face categorization in individuals who had recovered sight after congenital blindness. Eighteen participants (6 women, 12 men) who had undergone congenital cataract reversal surgery participated in a well-validated electroencephalographic (EEG) experiment with fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) to elicit automatic neural face-categorization responses from variable natural images. As normally sighted controls (N = 13) and individuals with reversed developmental cataracts (N = 16), congenital cataract reversal individuals exhibited clear neural face-categorization activity. However, their neural face categorization responses were significantly weaker and delayed. These observations show that previous behavioral studies with explicit tasks lacked sensitivity to uncover altered face categorization in sight-recovery individuals with a history of congenital cataracts. This indicates that early experience is necessary for categorization too. We speculate that altered neural correlates of face categorization result from a lower selectivity of face-selective areas of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, impeding higher-order face processes such as face identity recognition.
人类短暂的早期视觉剥夺对面孔的加工造成的损害比对其他物体类别的加工造成的损害更大。虽然在先天性视觉剥夺后视力恢复的个体中，整体性面孔加工和面孔个体化似乎在很大程度上受损，但他们将刺激物归类为面孔的行为能力被描述为得以保留。在此，我们全面研究了先天性失明后恢复视力的个体的快速自动面孔分类。18名接受了先天性白内障逆转手术的参与者（6名女性，12名男性）参与了一项经过充分验证的脑电图（EEG）实验，该实验采用快速周期性视觉刺激（FPVS），以从各种自然图像中引出自动的神经面孔分类反应。作为视力正常的对照组（N = 13）和发育性白内障逆转个体（N = 16），先天性白内障逆转个体表现出明显的神经面孔分类活动。然而，他们的神经面孔分类反应明显较弱且延迟。这些观察结果表明，先前使用明确任务的行为研究缺乏敏感性，无法揭示有先天性白内障病史的视力恢复个体中改变的面孔分类。这表明早期经验对于分类也是必要的。我们推测，面孔分类的神经相关性改变是由于枕颞叶腹侧皮质面孔选择区域的选择性降低所致，并阻碍了诸如面孔身份识别等高级面孔加工过程。
