Evidence for face selectivity in early vision

Florence Campana (1) , Jacob Martin (1, 2) , Levan Bokeria (1) , Simon Thorpe (2) , Xiong Jiang (1) , Maximilian Riesenhuber (1)

1 GU - Georgetown University [Washington]
2 CERCO - Centre de recherche cerveau et cognition

The commonly accepted “simple-to-complex” model of visual processing in the brain posits that visual tasks on complex objects such as faces are based on representations in high-level visual areas. Yet, recent experimental data showing the visual system’s ability to localize faces in natural images within 100ms (Crouzet et al., 2010) challenge the prevalent hierarchical description of the visual system, and instead suggest the hypothesis of face-selectivity in early visual areas. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis with human participants in two eye tracking experiments, an fMRI experiment and an EEG experiment. We found converging evidence for neural representations selective for upright faces in V1/V2, with latencies starting around 40 ms post-stimulus onset. Our findings suggest a revision of the standard “simple-to-complex” model of hierarchical visual processing.

Mots clés: 128); Significance Statement (119); Introduction (545); Discussion

Domaines: Sciences cognitives

Florence Campana, Jacob Martin, Levan Bokeria, Simon Thorpe, Xiong Jiang, et al.. Evidence for face selectivity in early vision. 2020. ⟨hal-03032067⟩