Special issue: ReviewRepetition effects in human ERPs to faces
Section snippets
Outline
The ability to recognize a person by their face is crucial for humans' social functioning. Understanding which precise processes are involved in the coding, learning and subsequent recognition of individual faces is an important challenge for researchers in the field of the cognitive neurosciences. The human encephalogram is a rich source of information, and has enhanced our understanding of the neural mechanisms implicated in the coding of face identity coding over the past decades.
Categorical adaptation and face detection
Faces elicit a large bilateral temporal negativity peaking between 150 and 190 ms following face onset, termed N170. The N170 is typically regarded as a marker of the structural encoding of faces (for a review, see Eimer, 2011). In the words of the seminal publication by Shlomo Bentin and coworkers, “N170 may reflect the operation of a neural mechanism tuned to detect (as opposed to identify) human faces, similar to the ‘structural encoder’ suggested by Bruce and Young (1986).” (Bentin et al.,
Prototypicality effects and the encoding of second-order spatial relations
Immediately subsequent to the N170, faces elicit an occipitotemporal P200 with an approximate peak latency between 200 and 250 ms. The P200 is a face-sensitive response that has only recently attracted attention of researchers interested in face identification. Some earlier research indicated smaller P200 responses for less typical compared to more typical faces (Halit, de Haan, & Johnson, 2000), and Latinus and Taylor (2006) were the first to interpret the P200 as reflecting the encoding of
Identity repetition priming and representations for recognizing individual faces
The N250r (r for repetition) is a ventral temporal negativity that is consistently larger for repeated compared to non-repeated faces (i.e., is sensitive to repetition priming). This ERP modulation is typically larger for familiar than unfamiliar faces (Doerr et al., 2011, Herzmann et al., 2004, Schweinberger et al., 1995), more prominent over the right than the left hemisphere, onsets as early as between 180 and 220 ms, and has a peak latency between about 230 and 330 ms. With common average
Face identity learning and representations for recognizing individual faces
In earlier studies published before around 2005, and based on evidence from repetition priming studies which typically involved only a single repetition of a face, the N250r to familiar faces appeared to be a rather transient phenomenon: Although surviving a small number of 2–4 intervening faces (Pfütze et al., 2002), N250r seemed to be almost eliminated when hundreds of faces intervene between familiar face repetitions – despite the fact that behavioural priming from a single presentation of a
Semantic processing and memory for people
The “classical” ERP component that is related to aspects of semantic processing is the N400. Although originally demonstrated as a prominent negative ERP in response to semantic violations in a sentence context, maximal at central-parietal locations around 400 ms (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), subsequent research used pairs of stimuli and suggested that a reduced negativity (or larger positivity) to a second stimulus (S2) which repeated some semantic attributes of S1 reflected the attenuation of an
Neuroimaging studies
Although ERP repetition effects are at focus of the present review, a few selected comments might be appropriate with respect to a comparison with findings from neuroimaging studies (for overview see also R. N. Henson, this issue). The model by Haxby et al. (2000) distinguishes between a “core” system with three components, according to which the inferior occipital gyri mediate the early perception of facial features, whereas the fusiform cortex mediates the perception of invariant aspects of
Conclusion
In this paper, we reviewed evidence for a number of ERP components that are sensitive to the repetition of different kinds of information in faces. We have largely restricted this review to studies that have considered more than one ERP component only (typically the N170). In adopting this broader perspective to various ERP repetition effects, we also seek to avoid problems that may be related with an over-focus on specific EEG phenomena. As an example, consider a highly cited paper by Tanaka
Acknowledgements
SRS is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Research Unit Person Perception; Grant Reference FOR1097). MFN is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (Grant Reference CE110001021).
References (118)
- et al.
Event-related potentials and the semantic matching of faces
Neuropsychologia
(1989) - et al.
Event-related potentials and the matching of familiar and unfamiliar faces
Neuropsychologia
(1988) - et al.
Event-related brain potentials differentiate priming and recognition to familiar and unfamiliar faces
Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology
(1995) - et al.
Event related potentials, lexical decision and semantic priming
Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology
(1985) - et al.
Adaptation modulates the electrophysiological substrates of perceived facial distortion: support for opponent coding
Neuropsychologia
(2010) - et al.
Early adaptation to repeated unfamiliar faces across viewpoint changes in the right hemisphere: evidence from the N170 ERP component
Neuropsychologia
(2009) - et al.
Integrating face and voice in person perception
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
(2007) - et al.
N170 adaptation effect for repeated faces and words
Neuroscience
(2015) - et al.
Hemispheric asymmetries in image-specific and abstractive priming of famous faces: evidence from reaction times and event-related brain potentials
Neuropsychologia
(2007) - et al.
The FN400 indexes familiarity-based recognition of faces
NeuroImage
(2007)
Processing of famous faces and medial temporal lobe event-related potentials: a depth electrode study
NeuroImage
Familiarity enhances invariance of face representations in human ventral visual cortex: fMRI evidence
NeuroImage
Effects of face inversion on the structural encoding and recognition of faces. Evidence from event-related brain potentials
Cognitive Brain Research
Event-related brain potentials distinguish processing stages involved in face perception and recognition
Clinical Neurophysiology
Memory systems for structural and semantic knowledge of faces and buildings
Brain Research
Differential sensitivity for viewpoint between familiar and unfamiliar faces in human visual cortex
NeuroImage
Early temporal negativity is sensitive to perceived (rather than physical) facial identity
Neuropsychologia
Is neural adaptation of the N170 category-specific? Effects of adaptor stimulus duration and interstimulus interval
International Journal of Psychophysiology
Visual mental imagery and perception produce opposite adaptation effects on early brain potentials
NeuroImage
Neural systems for recognition of familiar faces
Neuropsychologia
Can predictive coding explain repetition suppression?
Cortex
The distributed human neural system for face perception
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Repetition suppression to faces in the fusiform face area: a personal and dynamic journey
Cortex
Neural bases of eye and gaze processing: the core of social cognition
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Inversion and contrast polarity reversal affect both encoding and recognition processes of unfamiliar faces: a repetition study using ERPs
NeuroImage
Effects of repetition learning on upright, inverted and contrast-reversed face processing using ERPs
NeuroImage
Neural correlates of facilitations in face learning by selective caricaturing of facial shape or reflectance
NeuroImage
Exploring the functional architecture of person recognition system with event-related potentials in a within- and cross-domain self-priming of faces
Neuropsychologia
High and low performers differ in the use of shape information for face recognition
Neuropsychologia
Distortions in the brain? ERP effects of caricaturing familiar and unfamiliar faces
Brain Research
The faces you remember: caricaturing shape facilitates brain processes reflecting the acquisition of new face representations
Biological Psychology
Face processing stages: impact of difficulty and the separation of effects
Brain Research
Early sensitivity for eyes within faces: a new neuronal account of holistic and featural processing
NeuroImage
Is the rapid adaptation paradigm too rapid? Implications for face and object processing
NeuroImage
Face and object encoding under perceptual load: ERP evidence
NeuroImage
N250r and N400 ERP correlates of immediate famous face repetition are independent of perceptual load
Brain Research
N250r ERP repetition effects from distractor faces when attending to another face under load: evidence for a face attention resource
Brain Research
View-independent coding of face identity in frontal and temporal cortices is modulated by familiarity: an event-related fMI study
NeuroImage
Visual adaptation provides objective electrophysiological evidence of facial identity discrimination
Cortex
Holistic processing of faces happens at a glance
Vision Research
Understanding face perception by means of human electrophysiology
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Faces forming traces: neurophysiological correlates of learning naturally distinctive and caricatured faces
NeuroImage
Effects of anticaricaturing vs. caricaturing and their neural correlates elucidate a role of shape for face learning
Neuropsychologia
Covert recognition and the neural system for face processing
Cortex
Brain responses to repetitions of human and animal faces, inverted faces, and objects – an MEG study
Brain Research
Human brain potential correlates of repetition priming in face and name recognition
Neuropsychologia
Event-related brain potential evidence for a response of inferior temporal cortex to familiar face repetitions
Cognitive Brain Research
Brain-potential evidence for the time course of access to biographical facts and names of familiar persons
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Neural adaptation is related to face repetition irrespective of identity: a reappraisal of the N170 effect
Experimental Brain Research
Are faces “special” objects? Associative and semantic priming of face and object recognition and naming
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Cited by (141)
Beyond facial expressions: A systematic review on effects of emotional relevance of faces on the N170
2023, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews