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Palmisano A, Chiarantoni G, Bossi F, Conti A, D'Elia V, Tagliente S, Nitsche MA, Rivolta D. Face pareidolia is enhanced by 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) of the face perception network. Sci Rep 2023; 13:2035. [PMID: 36739325 PMCID: PMC9899232 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-29124-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/09/2022] [Accepted: 01/31/2023] [Indexed: 02/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Pareidolia refers to the perception of ambiguous sensory patterns as carrying a specific meaning. In its most common form, pareidolia involves human-like facial features, where random objects or patterns are illusionary recognized as faces. The current study investigated the neurophysiological correlates of face pareidolia via transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). tACS was delivered at gamma (40 Hz) frequency over critical nodes of the "face perception" network (i.e., right lateral occipito-temporal and left prefrontal cortex) of 75 healthy participants while completing four face perception tasks ('Mooney test' for faces, 'Toast test', 'Noise pareidolia test', 'Pareidolia task') and an object perception task ('Mooney test' for objects). In this single-blind, sham-controlled between-subjects study, participants received 35 min of either Sham, Online, (40Hz-tACS_ON), or Offline (40Hz-tACS_PRE) stimulation. Results showed that face pareidolia was causally enhanced by 40Hz-tACS_PRE in the Mooney test for faces in which, as compared to sham, participants more often misperceived scrambled stimuli as faces. In addition, as compared to sham, participants receiving 40Hz-tACS_PRE showed similar reaction times (RTs) when perceiving illusory faces and correctly recognizing noise stimuli in the Toast test, thus not exhibiting hesitancy in identifying faces where there were none. Also, 40Hz-tACS_ON induced slower rejections of face pareidolia responses in the Noise pareidolia test. The current study indicates that 40 Hz tACS can enhance pareidolic illusions in healthy individuals and, thus, that high frequency (i.e., gamma band) oscillations are critical in forming coherent and meaningful visual perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annalisa Palmisano
- Department of Education, Psychology, and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.
| | - Giulio Chiarantoni
- Department of Education, Psychology, and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
| | | | - Alessio Conti
- Department of Education, Psychology, and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
| | - Vitiana D'Elia
- Department of Education, Psychology, and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
| | - Serena Tagliente
- Department of Education, Psychology, and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
| | - Michael A Nitsche
- Department of Psychology and Neurosciences, Leibniz Research Center for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo), Dortmund, Germany.,Department of Neurology, University Medical Hospital Bergmannsheil, Bochum, Germany
| | - Davide Rivolta
- Department of Education, Psychology, and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.,School of Psychology, University of East London (UEL), London, UK
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Li Y, Zhang M, Liu S, Luo W. EEG decoding of multidimensional information from emotional faces. Neuroimage 2022; 258:119374. [PMID: 35700944 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119374] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2022] [Revised: 06/03/2022] [Accepted: 06/10/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans can detect and recognize faces quickly, but there has been little research on the temporal dynamics of the different dimensional face information that is extracted. The present study aimed to investigate the time course of neural responses to the representation of different dimensional face information, such as age, gender, emotion, and identity. We used support vector machine decoding to obtain representational dissimilarity matrices of event-related potential responses to different faces for each subject over time. In addition, we performed representational similarity analysis with the model representational dissimilarity matrices that contained different dimensional face information. Three significant findings were observed. First, the extraction process of facial emotion occurred before that of facial identity and lasted for a long time, which was specific to the right frontal region. Second, arousal was preferentially extracted before valence during the processing of facial emotional information. Third, different dimensional face information exhibited representational stability during different periods. In conclusion, these findings reveal the precise temporal dynamics of multidimensional information processing in faces and provide powerful support for computational models on emotional face perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yiwen Li
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China
| | - Mingming Zhang
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China
| | - Shuaicheng Liu
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China
| | - Wenbo Luo
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian 116029, China.
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Dima DC, Perry G, Messaritaki E, Zhang J, Singh KD. Spatiotemporal dynamics in human visual cortex rapidly encode the emotional content of faces. Hum Brain Mapp 2018; 39:3993-4006. [PMID: 29885055 PMCID: PMC6175429 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24226] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2018] [Revised: 04/13/2018] [Accepted: 05/14/2018] [Indexed: 12/05/2022] Open
Abstract
Recognizing emotion in faces is important in human interaction and survival, yet existing studies do not paint a consistent picture of the neural representation supporting this task. To address this, we collected magnetoencephalography (MEG) data while participants passively viewed happy, angry and neutral faces. Using time‐resolved decoding of sensor‐level data, we show that responses to angry faces can be discriminated from happy and neutral faces as early as 90 ms after stimulus onset and only 10 ms later than faces can be discriminated from scrambled stimuli, even in the absence of differences in evoked responses. Time‐resolved relevance patterns in source space track expression‐related information from the visual cortex (100 ms) to higher‐level temporal and frontal areas (200–500 ms). Together, our results point to a system optimised for rapid processing of emotional faces and preferentially tuned to threat, consistent with the important evolutionary role that such a system must have played in the development of human social interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diana C Dima
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom
| | - Gavin Perry
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom
| | - Eirini Messaritaki
- BRAIN Unit, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom.,Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom
| | - Jiaxiang Zhang
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom
| | - Krish D Singh
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ, United Kingdom
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